The B-Team: An XCOM fanfic based on an ongoing Ironman game
by ruzkin
Summary: First contact with an alien species has been made, and the results aren't good. Commander Pournelle's A-Team have been wiped out, leaving him with a handful of rookie recruits as the planet's sole defense against an alien invasion. With the might of the XCOM project behind them, they might just have a chance... No reloads, no saves, no second chances. It's time for the B-Team.
1. Prologue: Goodbye, A-Team

******Prologue – Goodbye, A-Team.**

Commander Pournelle slumped in his chair as the footage looped for the eighth time. He'd hoped there'd be something new to discover in those fifteen minutes of chest-cam video, some vital piece of information that would compensate for the loss of his three best soldiers, but it was useless. Grainy images of a shadowed warehouse. A flash of movement. The sudden concussion of a grenade detonating, followed by the meaty thud of Corporal Lebedev's body hitting the floor. Then flashes of muzzle fire, screams, and silence.

Pournelle paused the replay and rested his head in his hands. His breath echoed in his ears. "What'd we get out of Ramirez?"

The men and women assembled around Pournelle's desk looked grim. "Sargent Ramirez is badly injured," one suit finally volunteered. "His version of events is... suspect."

"Tell me anyway."

The suit coughed. "The team landed in Hamburg just after nine pm. They located the extraterrestrial object – what we're referring to for now as pod zero – and followed a series of strange noises to a local auto storage facility. Once inside, the team discovered an unidentified man who requested help in German. However, when approached, the man shot Corporal Lebedev at close range and-"

"The X-rays, damn it! What did he say about the aliens?"

The suit stared at his papers, pointedly avoiding Pournelle's gaze. "Three extraterrestrials. Lieutenant Hashimoto killed one with a grenade but was shot from behind shortly after. Ramirez killed the second."

"And the third?"

"Escaped, we assume."

"Christ." Commander Pournelle ground his back teeth. First contact with an alien race, and what did he have to show for it? Nearly eighty German civilians dead or missing, a first response team cut to ribbons and their backup team reduced to one man – a man who, if their surgeons were correct, would be lucky to ever walk again. On top of that, an extraterrestrial loose in Hamburg, and the XCOM council out for his head on a plate.

At least the dropship came back in one piece. Small mercies, he supposed.

"Our research team is already conducting autopsies on the corpses of the... X-rays," the suit said, as if to break the silence. "That aside, we need to know your instructions in case of a second incursion. We know the current list of recruits is small-"

"We barely have a squad," Pournelle said. "Twelve rookies. They're trained for peacekeeping operations, not hostile contact with extraterrestrials. Maybe if our sponsor nations were willing to donate a few platoons of their best and brightest, we could turn this outfit into something professional. As it is, I'm protecting Earth on a shoestring budget, with barely enough manpower to keep the lights running."

The suit grinned weakly. "What do you expect, Commander? That's politics."

Pournelle was about to reply when the phone on his desk rang. Not the white phone, but the heavy ceramic hardline. He snatched it up, took a quick breath to calm his nerves, and said, "Central?"  
"Commander Pournelle?"

He recognised the voice. Jerry King in HQ. He sounded panicked, which was unusual for King, a man who'd been both a military analyst and highschool teacher before joining the X-COM project. That could only mean one thing. "Contact?"

"Touchdown in Calgary," King said. "Abductions and civilian deaths reported. The Canadian government request immediate assistance."

Pournelle squeezed the phone tight. He looked at the circle of suits across from his desk, but none of them were offering solutions. He supposed that if they'd had solutions, they'd be sitting on his side of the desk, and he on theirs.

His best recruits were either in traction or on slabs, Calgary was under attack, and he needed to make a decision.

Pournelle's lips drew back over his teeth in a rictus grin. "Gentlemen," he said. "Your second incursion has arrived, right on schedule.

"And, God help us all, I'm sending the B-Team."


	2. Chapter 1: Operation Devil's Prophet

******Chapter 1: Operation Devil's Prophet. Abduction in Calgary, Canada.**

Rookie Nomi Chi had ridden in some shitty aircraft before – a domestic Cessna, a military Ruslan, a glider held together with spit and rubber bands – but the Skyranger was a whole new breed. When it wasn't whipping up and down like some cheap-shit seaside rollercoaster, it yawed with every gust of wind, slaloming her guts back and forth against her ribs.

The rifle in her hands was impossibly huge, impossibly heavy, a science fiction parody of how rifles were supposed to look. Her body armour was massive around her chest and shoulders, all bulging angles and blinking red lights. The three other rookies in the back of the Skyranger were grim-faced, staring at their feet, refusing to meet anybody else's gaze.

And then came the cherry on top of the shit-sundae. Aliens in Calgary.

"X-rays," Chi whispered. "Serious greys. This has to be a dream."

The guy sitting across from her glanced up, grinning like a maniac. "Dream? Shit, I wish."

Chi scowled back. White, the guy's name was. Andrew White. Big shouldered, dusky blonde and curly haired, bright eyed like a kid on a field trip. She'd barely exchanged three sentences with him or any of the other recruits over the past few weeks – it was the side-effect of being signed up to a secret program that ran out of an underground base, organised to fight an extraterrestrial force that couldn't exist. It made everyone scared to say hello, lest the XCOM thought police appear from the shadows and drag them off to the brig.

But now, halfway to an incursion in Calgary with the very real possibility of death or evisceration growing more real by the minute, this guy had decided to get chatty.

So be it. "Doesn't feel real," she said. "Not yet."

"Like it's all a big joke. I get it." White jerked his thumb at the dark-haired woman sitting next to him, her eyes focused somewhere beyond the steel wall of the Skyranger. "Zelman here thinks it's bullshit. Like Pournelle is some actor and they're going to whip the curtain back in a second and show us an audience. Tada, assholes! You're the most gullible wannabe soldiers in history!"

Chi met Zelman's gaze. "You really think that?"

Zelman – Nyssa Zelman, by the nametag on her breastplate – stared at the ceiling of the Skyranger for a while. The craft rattled around them, creaking in a crosswind. Then, finally, she said,

"No. But I wish I did."

Andrew White grinned even wider. "What about you, Gollnick?" he said, calling to the last of their squad of four. "Reality, or cruel daytime TV hoax?"

Wendy Gollnick, another slim Asiatic with black hair cropped short above her eyes, glanced up at the sound of her name. "Huh?"

"I said-"

"I heard you," Gollnick said. "I was just thinking about the first contact team. They say only one guy came out. So, which of us gets lucky?"

The Skyranger hit another pocket of turbulence. Rookie Chi grimaced, and tightened her grip on her rifle.

#

They landed two hundred meters outside the incursion zone: a risky move, Chi thought. Close enough for ground fire, not close enough to surprise anyone waiting inside. Even so, the parking lot of the Calgary supermarket was silent and dark. A row of cars were parked outside the front doors, the Volvo on the end blinking its alarm lights silently. A single lamppost was bent at the base all the way down to ground level, denting the asphalt, sparks jumping from ruptured wires. Beside that, all was still.

Chi led the way out the back of the Skyranger and into the relative cover of a concrete planter. Her earpiece chirped: Commander Pournelle, his voice strangely grating. "Rookie, you see anything?" White, Gollnick and Zelman were already taking up positions on each end of the planter, watching all oncoming angles. "Negative, Commander."

"You're on point. Take it slow and steady. Eyewitnesses reported at least three X-rays, maybe more."

"Understood." Despite her measured tone, in her head she was cursing him. Out of four rookies, why her? Didn't they have anyone else they could throw to the wolves? And why in the hell would aliens choose a Canadian supermarket as a likely spot for abductions?

As if reading her mind, Rookie Zelman said, "Guess they came to pick up fresh humans at low low prices."

"We could die here," Chi muttered. "You think this is the time?"

"Gimme a break. I'm shitting myself here." Zelman cracked a grin. "So, they send in three Asian women and white boy. Racial discrimination?"

"Flip of a coin." Chi peered over the lip of the planter. It looked clear all the way to the supermarket doors. "Okay, you're with me. White, Gollnick, keep low and move to the second entrance. Entry on my signal."

The rookies nodded and Chi led the way across the gravel lot, past the rows of empty cars and up to the red-brick walls. Passing those silent vehicles was eerie. Some still had the keys in the ignition. There were no bodies, no civilians cowering in their trucks, which only made her more nervous. Evacs never went so smoothly. Either there were more bodies to discover inside, or the so-called alien attackers had already left, taking corpses and captives with them.

She reached the wall with Zelman close behind and crept along to the glass double-doors. From her position, Chi couldn't see shit. Rows of shelving and canned goods, a wine rack and a cute display of Doritos chips. No greys, X-rays, whatever HQ was calling them. She motioned Zelman in close and double checked her rifle was locked and ready to fire. White and Gollnick were already at the second door. All she had now was excuses.

Rookie Chi counted to five and, heart in her throat, nudged the door open.

The inside of the supermarket was shadowed, long black wedges cast by the shelves and tall stands of confectionery. When she concentrated she could just make out a whisper echoing at the back of the store – it might have been breath, or bare feet against linoleum, or a curtain flapping against an open window. Maybe just her imagination.

The front counter seemed like a solid bet. She slid inside the door, vaulted the counter and sighted down the length of the supermarket. Something was moving at the far end, behind the freezer section, but she couldn't tell whether it was civilian or X-ray in the darkness. Zelman was slipping into cover behind her, taking up position behind the shelves, while White and Gollnick eased the back door open and moved through, whisper quiet.

Chi caught Zelman's attention, then pointed at the shadows at the end of the store. "Movement," she mouthed.

There was a sound like the hum of a microwave, and then all hell broke loose.

A bright green flash lit the world in strobe, and Chi dropped instinctively. The air above her head tore in two and the chewing gum display set atop the counter exploded in a hail of fire. Scraps of paper and boiling plasma danced down around her shoulders. Zelman was screaming her name, but she couldn't reply. Her tongue had frozen in her mouth.

___Don't let me die here_, she thought. The words repeated in her skull like a mantra. ___Don't let me die here. Don't let me die._

#

Zelman dove for cover as soon as soon as the barrage began. She skidded along the linoleum, fetching up hard against tall store shelving, and crouched there helplessly as green flame zipped across the supermarket and ignited the wall over Chi's head. "Talk to me!" she called, but if Chi was shouting anything back she couldn't hear it over the electrical crackle of gunfire.

She peeked out from behind the shelving, tracing the fire back to the corner of the store, and her breath caught in her throat. She could see them clearly, crouching in the dark, huge bulging heads propped atop comically spindly torsos. They would've seemed a B-movie joke in any other situation. Now, with what looked like laser fire sizzling in the air, all Zelman wanted to do was exactly what she'd warned Rookie Chi about: shit her pants.

Fear was a luxury, she thought. That was what her boot-camp instructors had drilled into her head. Combat was about instinct, action and reaction. No time for sentimentality.

Her left hand crept down to the grenade at her belt and yanked it free.

A quick second to make sure of where White and Gollnick were stationed – safely behind the heavy freezers on the other side of the store – and she pulled the pin. "Fire in the hole!" Zelman cried, and hurled the pineapple overarm down the length of the supermarket.

The two greys glanced up as the grenade landed between them. They stared at it, then at Zelman, then back at the grenade. The first grey bent down on tiny legs and stroked the grenade with one long, slippery finger.

Zelman pulled back and plugged her ears.

The boom rattled her guts and vibrated her eyeballs inside her skull, and she tried not to scream as shrapnel tore the shelves around her head. Potato chips and scraps of aluminium foil drifted down around her ears.

The concussion faded, and she dared peek around the corner of the shelves. All that was left of the two greys was a smear of smoke and viscera, stirred through with plaster and shattered glass.

"Two down!" she called. "Two-"

The back door of the supermarket slammed back on its hinges. Zelman saw two squat figures in the darkness and smoke, huge black eyes shining. Weapons hummed in their hands, boiling with plasma.

She had just enough time to scream before the fire rolled in.

#

Rookie Wendy Gollnick was behind a homewares display when the two X-rays burst through the back door and started shooting. She could smell the power in the air, the stink of ozone as plasma boiled past and blew the shelves to shit.

Zelman was down on one knee behind the shelves, pinned. "Fuck!" she screamed. "Fuck, fuck, help me! Fucking-"

Gollnick's finger was already on the trigger. She raised up, sighted, and grinned as the rifle kicked against her shoulder. The flash of gunfire and the clack-clack-clack of the bolt slamming home was soothing, metronomic. It sounded in time with her heartbeat. She breathed gunsmoke and exhaled poison.

Plaster and stacks of cans exploded at the rear of the supermarket, and the two X-rays scattered – one breaking right, behind a rack of fresh vegetables, and the other diving left, towards a bank of open windows leading out onto the street. She couldn't tell whether she'd scored any hits, but they'd stopped firing on Zelman and that was a start. "Hey, Rookie, you okay?" she called. "You hurt?"

Zelman answered with a roar. She rounded the shelves at a run, rifle up against her shoulder, and Gollnick watched, frozen, as Zelman closed the distance, rounded the vegetable stand, and jammed her rifle up into the first X-ray's face.

A short, sudden burst echoed off the tiled floor, and Zelman sagged against the shelves. Her ballistic armour dripped bright white fluids. "One left!"

"Are you insane?" Gollnick called, but she already knew the answer. She couldn't judge Zelman. Hell, all of them were insane just for signing up. _I could've been an artist_, she thought. _Or a pilot, or a zookeeper_. Instead, she'd chosen a rifle, an underground barracks and a shitty pay-scale.

And yet, she loved it. She could still taste gunpowder on the air, and she let it fill her lungs like a drug. One left, Zelman had said. The X-ray she'd seen jump through the window.

Rookie Andy White was already moving in that direction. She checked her magazine, caught White's gaze to let him know she'd cover him, and let him take the lead.

#

Since the moment Andy White had entered the store he'd been operating blind. Luck had seen him pressed up hard against the walk-in freezers when Zelman tossed the grenade, leaving him with a ringing in the ears but little else. The first he'd seen of the two X-rays was when Gollnick fired down the aisle, and the little grey bastard had split left, towards the windows. A flash of slick pale flesh against the glass, and then he was gone.

His rifle shook in his hands as he approached the bay of windows, but only barely. Gollnick had his back, and that gave him a little confidence, but he knew he was still first in the firing line. He hissed back, "Bastard could be anywhere. Might've circled the whole building to shoot us in our asses."

"You think they're that smart?" Gollnick replied.

"Well, they flew a fucking spaceship, so I'm just assuming-"

There was a bright green flash and White threw himself sideways, slamming shoulder-first into the fruit display. There was a high ting of glass shattering, and then a sound like a miniature jet banking low overhead. The air was cut with bright green oxide splashes, so hot White could feel them curling the hairs on his arms.

"Shit!" he screamed between his teeth. "He's got a bead!"

"Shoot back, arsehole!" he heard Zelman call, from somewhere inside the rows of shelving.

"I can't see anything!"

"Then take a look!"

White swallowed hard. He crawled a few meters forward on hands and knees, until he figured he was out of the X-ray's line of fire. Then, barely daring to breathe, he peered over the top of the vegetable display.

He could see it, he realised. A slim crescent of grey flesh just above the windowsill was the crown of the bastard's head. He held back on the urge to take a wild shot. The supermarket backed on to a local nature reserve, and if he missed the fucker would run. It it reached the treeline they might never find it.

"What're you waiting for?" Zelman shouted. "Get the little shit! Go, go, go!"

White swallowed glue, his finger trembling on the trigger, and ran for the window.

There was a moment, just before he jumped, when he thought _this is crazy – ____real people don't leap through goddamn glass!_But he was already moving too fast, sailing through the air, one armoured hand thrown over his face as he crashed through. The air around him was filled with tiny, splintered shards, as fine and sparkling as snow.

He landed on the macadam on hands and knees. His rifle slipped in his hands, but he kept his grip. The grey looked up, glass pinging off its leathery flesh, and White was sure there was genuine surprise behind those huge, black eyes.

It lifted its weapon, and White squeezed the trigger.

Back in basic training, White had spent weeks putting high explosive rounds through pumpkins. He'd gone back to barracks every night picking seeds and strings of pumpkin flesh out of his hair, and his skin never stopped smelling like gunpowder and pie.

Firing his rifle into the grey's face at close range had the same effect. The X-ray was nearly flipped, tiny legs kicking at the air, the ruin of its skull smashing against the pavement. The air was filled with a fine green mist and the stink of burning flesh.

White lay on the ground, panting, his finger still trembling on the trigger. For a moment he expected the creature to get back up and totter around, fumbling blindly with its slick grey fingers. He'd seen chickens do just that, back on his father's farm. Some had lived for hours with blood squirting from the stump of their necks. But the grey wasn't moving, wasn't breathing. Its black eyes were blank, reflecting the light of streetlamps and stars.

Glass crunched behind him, and White whirled. Rookie Chi stood behind him, rifle up against her shoulder, sweat shining on her brow. She scratched her head, and for the first time he noticed the tattoo above her ear, barely visible beneath her buzz-cut. Like flowers, or math, or some unholy fusion of the two.

"Hey," she said. "Thought you were dead."

"Maybe I am," White said. "Maybe this is a dream."

Chi scowled. "Eat a dick, White." She touched her finger to her ear. "HQ? Any more signs?"

It seemed an age before Chi nodded. "Roger. Coming home." She flicked the safety on her rifle and reached down to White. "Need a hand?"

"I'm good." White stood slowly, knees aching. The body of the grey steamed at his feet. He swallowed hard. "Feels like I should have some line. Like Will Smith, you know. Welcome to erf! But..."

"But?"

"I dunno." He nudged the body with the toe of his boot. It was light, fragile. Birdlike. Only the size of a child, when you got down to it. "Stupid fucker flew a billion miles just to get shot in the face. Kinda sad."

"You feel sorry for the thing?"

"Hell no." He tried to crack a smile, but it felt weak. Fake. "Just thinking out loud. Let's get home."

#

It wasn't until the entire supermarket had been cleaned and decontaminated and the four X-ray corpses loaded into the back of the Skyranger than Nomi Chi began to relax. Even so, she kept her rifle ready and her finger alongside the trigger-guard until the back ramp of the Skyranger had locked in place and they were lifting off the tarmac.

She looked across to Zelman, who was strapping herself into place. "Hey. Lady."

Zelman looked up. "Yeah?"

"Nice work with the, you know. Saving my ass."

"Thought you were gonna say grenade." The woman reached across and punched Chi on the shoulder. "Let's hope it's always that easy. Pew pew and stick them in bags, right?"

"Yeah. Easy." The memory of hot plasma skimming inches above Chi's head made her shiver. "In like Flynn."

Rookie White was pressed up against the tiny Skyranger window, grinning from ear to ear. "Ciao, cockfags!" he hooted, and then the roar of the engines swallowed the rest of his sentence. Chi leaned back against the bulkhead and closed her eyes. The steel was hard and studded with rivets, but at that moment it was the most comfortable pillow she could've asked for.

One mission down, she thought. Easy. Pew pew.

But somehow, she knew it wouldn't last.


	3. Chapter 2: Operation Defiant Gaze

******Chapter ********2********: Operation Defiant Gaze. ********UFO Landing in central USA.**

**Interlude**

There wasn't much left of the X-ray on the autopsy table. Not much recognisable to Commander Pournelle's untrained eyes, at least. Scraps of flesh. Organs connected by valves as intricate as chemistry tubing. An ichor that stung his eyes, even through the protective goggles.

He turned his head to cough. "So, what do we get out of all this?"

Dr Vahlen, head of XCOM research, was bent over a laptop on the far side of the operating room. The bright light of the laptop screen flashed in her lenses. "Excuse me?"

"Net gain, Doctor. You've taken apart four dead aliens today. Conclusions? How does this help my troops?"

A sigh. Doctor Vahlen closed her laptop, removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. "To tell you the truth, very little. I could talk about how they reprocess our atmosphere to suit their lungs, how their brain structure is honeycombed, how they bleed a mild analgesic... But as for your troops, all I can say is that they die just like men. They are flesh. Shoot straight, and they fall over."

Commander Pournelle was glad he could stuff his hands into the pockets of his military jacket, to keep Doctor Vahlen from seeing how they were clenched into fists. "I send them out to risk their lives, and all you can say is, shoot straight?"

"If you brought me a live specimen..." Dr Vahlen shrugged. "We are making advances on their weaponry as well. Despite the equipment self destructing upon the death of the user, we have still retrieved enough fragments to confirm the use of a high-temperature plasma discharge."

Rookie Nomi Chi's chestcam footage had been accurate. That was more disheartening than encouraging. "Can we protect against it?"

"To a degree. With time. Commander, you've given me so little to work with and you expect miracles."

"I gave you everything!" Pournelle's voice echoed back off the autopsy room tiles. He took a slow breath, straightened his shoulders, and forced his voice to stay even. "You do the best with what you have, Doctor. Just like my troops."

"Then-"

The phone on the far wall buzzed. Doctor Vahlen stopped mid-sentence and spun on her heel, stalking across the room and snatching the handset off the wall. "Yes?"

"Don't bother," Commander Pournelle said. He was already thumbing the button for the lift. "They need me in HQ, right? Another abduction?" But something about Vahlen's expression stopped him. The woman was always pale, just like everyone working the XCOM project – months spent underground tended to have that effect. But Vahlen's cheeks were sheet-white, drained of blood. "What?"

"A UFO," she whispered. "They're tracking it over Utah. You've got a live one, Commander."

**Chapter 2: Operation Defiant Gaze**

"So it's been shot down, right?"

"What?"

Adam Lewis had to lean in close, shouting to be heard over the roar of the Skyranger. "They shot it down. It's a wreck, yeah? Why can't they just bag and tag? Why us?"

"Hey, have you seen these things before?"

Lewis frowned and shook his head. He'd been with XCOM for months, humping his pack and training on the range, but this was the first time he'd lifted off for an actual front-line assignment. He half-hoped that there'd still be some action once they arrived – a few greys crushed in the crash, too injured to move but just alive enough to provide a bit of excitement. The other half of him hoped there'd be little left of the craft but a fiery smear across the landscape, and that all he'd have to do that day would be to wander back and forth with a zip-lock bag, picking up scraps of alien bone and sipping soda.

The soldier sitting across from him sighed. "I was in Germany last week. Four of them pulling people right out of a restaurant. They're tough, okay? Bet you a buck there'll still be resistance at the crash site."

That was enough to get Lewis interested. The nameplate on the soldier's armour read William Huang, but the pips on his shoulder indicated he was a bare Rookie, just like Lewis. Short guy, long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. Looked too delicate to be a soldier, but hell, if he'd passed XCOM's recruitment standards then he must've had something up his sleeve.

The Skyranger bucked like an angry bull, and all four soldiers in the back gripped their benches tight. "So," Lewis said, trying to keep his voice calm. "Why're you still on Rookie status? Didn't bag an X-ray?"

"Hell no! Barely got to shoot at all. Have you met, uh, Shephard?"

Lewis cast his mind back, trying to recall the names and faces of every recruit he'd passed in the barracks. "Short woman, red hair-"

"And boy, can she shoot." Huang looked almost dreamy as he rocked back and forth in his bulked out body armour. "Took two out through a window, straight off the 'ranger. Yeah, boy. Hell of a shot."

"But you didn't-"

"Not one. Ask Chi, she's seen action."

Lewis looked down the Skyranger at the two other recruits. Alan Zelman, he knew. Tall guy, big shoulders, cropped hair, strong beneath his armour. They'd played an awkward game of pool with him the day before. One of two Zelmans on base, Adam thought, but names were never his strong point. The other must've been Chi. A short woman with her hair shaved down to the knuckle and a permanent scowl. He'd also passed her in the halls, and she'd been smiling then, bobbing her head to an unheard beat. Now, half an hour from touchdown, she looked ready to punch a hole through the wall of the dropship.

"So, uh, Chi-"

"Nomi," she said.

"Sorry?"

"Nomi is fine," the woman said again. She still hadn't looked up. Her fingers drummed on the seat with a maddening rhythm. "Nearly got hit last time, you know. I should be on holiday. In therapy. Something."

"You know what they say," Huang said, checking the bore of his rifle. "No rest for the wicked."

"And you're wicked?"

The Skyranger bounced, and Huang grinned, a showman's smile that displayed perfect white teeth.

Nothing more needed to be said.

#

They landed just before midnight, and Lewis stepped off the Skyranger tray into knee-high swamp. The marsh-water rose up thick around Lewis's boots, and despite the fact that his armour was high-pressure and air-tight (to prevent catastrophic bleedouts, he'd been told), he swore he could feel that sticky gunk soaking through and staining his skin yellow. What few plants still lived in the swamp were thin and sickly, skeletal trees with limbs like old bones scratching at the sky. The flies were the worst. Clouds of mosquitos moved across the stagnant water, their buzz almost as loud as the Skyranger's cooling jets. It set Lewis's teeth on edge.

Chi was by his side, rifle up at her shoulder, making sure the grenade at her belt wasn't dangling in the water. "Lewis, Huang, up on that ridge. Zelman, with me."

"Who put you in charge?" Huang said, but Rookie Chi fixed him with the sort of stare that would wither flowers. "Yeah, I'm on it."

Lewis grinned. "Better keep up," he said, and made for the top of the closest hill. There was a scattering of boulders up top, enough cover for him to hunker down and get a better look at the expanse of the swamp. The water only looked deeper up ahead – they'd have to stick to the high ground or risk getting stuck. Worse, sinking in an unexpected pit, drowned by the weight of their armour. He supposed he just had to trust that Chi knew what she was doing.

Huang dropped down beside him, back against the rocks. "You see anything?"

"Light way ahead. Maybe a fire. Could be the crash site, could be hillbillies. Don't even know what to call these guys. X-rays, greys-"

"Xenos."

"Xenos?"

"Shit," Huang said. "You never watched Aliens? Xenomorphs."

"Once or twice," Lewis admitted. The number was closer to twenty, in truth – he simply hadn't made the connection. "Xenos," he said, rolling the word around in his mouth. "It fits."

Far below, Rookies Chi and Zelman were making their way from tree to log to tree, splashing through the murky swamp, slipping through stormclouds of mosquitos. Huang was watching them through the telescopic sight on his rifle, covering their advance. The guy's aim was steady, Lewis noticed. Good hands.

Without taking his eye from the sight, Huang said, "What'd you do, before all this?"

"Before I joined the military? I was a stage director."

"No shit?" Huang's smile grew wider. "I did theatre too!"

"Classical or-"

"Musicals. Always the musicals."

"An entertainer to the end."

"Always," Huang said. Steel clicked as he adjusted his sights. "Hey, so I've got a joke. This guy wakes up one morning, comes downstairs to get the newspaper, and when he picks it up off the front mat there's this snail sitting on the paper. So he picks the snail off and throws it over his house, and-"

"Contact!"

Lewis jerked upright. That was Chi calling from the base of the hill. He popped up, rifle up against his shoulder, and sighted.

Two greys, just like they'd appeared on Squaddie White's chestcam footage. Ungainly, tottering things slopping their way through the swamp, top heavy, skulls like swollen balloons and legs like Chihuahuas. Whenever they hit deep patches the water came up to their chins. The weapons they carried were the size of assault rifles and glowed bile-green with energy. Plasma, they said. The sort that tore holes in ceramic armour and left flesh smoking. Chi and Zelman had dropped flat behind a log, which meant Lewis had the only clear line of sight.

He thumbed the safety and let it rip.

The rifle slammed back against his shoulder hard enough to bruise, but it was worth the pain – one of the X-rays staggered, clipped in the torso. The other spun, startled, and ran on all fours up a slanted log and into the treeline, vanishing from sight.

"Put it down!" Huang shouted, but the grey lying injured on the ground was firing back. The light that boiled from the end of its weapon was as bright and sharp as staring into the sun, and he only had a moment to drop flat before the rocks he was crouched behind exploded in flame. Stone chips stung his cheeks as he fumbled for the magazine release. "Don't jam," he whispered, his finger moving automatically. "Don't you fucking jam-"

Down below, Chi's rifle was spitting fire, but Lewis couldn't tell whether she'd hit anything. The electrical hum of the grey's plasma had died off, and he dared peek over the lip of the boulder. The swamp below was empty. The greys had gone.

He propped his rifle up on the edge of the boulder – the surface, he noticed, was fused black, still dribbling molten rock like candlewax – and swept across the marsh below. "Huang, you see anything?"

"Yeah." Huang sounded hushed, almost awed. "But whatever it is, I have no goddamn idea."

#

He'd spent the whole firefight hunkered down, jaw set, finger on the trigger but unable to pop his head over the lip of the rocks and shoot back, but now Rookie William Huang was hallucinating. At least, that was how he explained what he was seeing: a wavering line of purple light tracking through the swamp mists like the Aurora Borealis, snaking through the trees, the still water glowing in its wake.

He didn't know whether it was some new alien weapon they hadn't been briefed about or some discharge from the downed UFO. Maybe the Northern Lights had descended into the middle of their battleground. All he knew was that the line was headed for Rookies Chi and Zelman, and that from behind their log they'd have no idea it was coming.

The stage was always terrifying. Stepping out into the lights, faced with hundreds of expectant theatregoers, faces upturned, smiling, waiting for his opening speech... that was an exercise in gut-clenching fear every single opening night. This, somehow, seemed an easy choice. Fight or die. Kill or be killed. Or worse, watch others be killed.

He snapped the cocking lever back on his rifle and vaulted the boulders he and Lewis had been hiding behind. "Cover me!" he called, and slid down the far side of the hill, kicking up mud and pebbles. There wasn't time to check whether Lewis was doing as asked. He just had to trust that XCOM wouldn't recruit people they couldn't trust to get the job done.

The line of purple light – more like a ribbon of energy, he thought, flexing with the wind like a living thing – ran across the bowl of the marsh, scattering swarms of gnats and knotting between the limbs of dead trees. He couldn't tell where it ended, but if he followed it to the source...

There. As he hit the bottom of the slope and splashed through the tepid swamp, he saw the silhouette of a grey crouched in the mists. That purple light shone slick in its eyes, and when he squinted he was sure he could see the energy flowing not from the weapon it held, but from its fingers.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard the sizzle of plasma. "Pinned!" Chi cried. "It's got me-"

No time to second guess. With the grey only a smudge in the distance, he brought his rifle up, sighted, exhaled, and pulled the trigger.

He hit the creature dead centre, the burst of fire sawing it in half. The grey didn't just fall over – it fell apart, its torso simply disconnecting from its oversized skull. There was a splash, and a bubbling sound, and then silence.

Huang found a space behind a tree-stump and waited, panting, finger still resting on the trigger. The hiss of plasma fire had stopped. Footsteps echoed through that vast, cold space. He heard grumbling – the big man, Zelman, he figured.

Finally, the two Rookies appeared around the hill – Chi with her rifle up, scanning the treeline, and Zelman closed behind, kicking up water like he'd rather be anywhere else. "You do that?" Zelman called.

Huang frowned. "What? You get the second one?"

"Didn't need to. The X-ray just dropped. Skull went pop like..." Zelman held both hands up on either side of his head. "Bam. Right as that purple light went out. Like they self destruct when you break their connection. I don't know, it just-"

Chi was already poking at the remains of the dead grey. "Long shot," she said, whistling between her teeth. "Not bad. Should put you up front all the time. Blow the heads off some more ETs."

"Xenos," Huang said. His mouth was dry and his heart was a thudding engine inside his chest but damn, he felt good. "Sounds better if you call them Xenos."

#

Rookie Alan Zelman had, as the expression goes, seen some serious shit.

He'd spent the last week sequestered in the barracks, watching chest-cam reruns of Operation Devil's Prophet until his eyes were raw. It didn't help that the best footage had been captured by his own sister, who had made a point of sitting with him in the ready-room, chewing rice crackers and noisily pointing out all her best-of moments. _You see? That grenade? Dead centre. Watch, watch what happens when I hit it up close. Right in the brainpan! Flipped him arse over apex!_

He already regretted having volunteered for the XCOM project... or at least, having signed up alongside his sister. It wasn't the bragging that worried him. It was the silence that followed. How she flinched away from his hand on her shoulder. How she left the barracks in the black of night, her footsteps echoing as she paced the corridors while everyone was trying to sleep. The clenched fists. The anger, barely disguised.

She'd been cut by shrapnel and felt plasma burn low enough overhead that it crisped her scalp, but she'd walked away from the mission with damage that went much deeper. Something a bandage couldn't fix.

So now he was trudging through some festering swamp, waiting for his own moment of truth. The mosquitos rose up thick in his nostrils, buzzing in his ears like they were trying to lay eggs inside the warmth of his brainpan. He stepped on something beneath the water that slithered away as he raised his foot; a flash of green scales was all he saw before the snake was gone.

Two down, he thought. How many greys could they fit in a UFO? The fires were getting closer, great flames belching smoke. He could just make out the slick steel curve of the craft, the metal sheen somehow otherworldly, like oil on water. Nothing like the clunky paper-plate flying saucers he'd been raised on as a kid, low budget Dr Who affairs with salt-shaker Daleks pouring out of the vents. This was so real he could smell it.

Then, from his right, the cry went up. "Contact!"

Zelman moved instinctively, sliding into cover against a rotten log, scanning the horizon. There: behind the trees, moving fast, two more of the lumpy-headed greys. A rifle chattered to his right, and then another: Lewis and Chi firing from the hip as the X-rays sprinted for cover. One wasn't so lucky, tumbling in a spray of ichor and sinking quickly beneath the surface of the water. The other stumbled, clutching its gut, and vanished in the direction of the downed UFO.

"Get after it!" Chi called, and Zelman found his legs moving, unbidden. He jumped his log and splashed across the marsh, the UFO looming closer and closer, the fires almost hot enough to blister.

A flash of green ripped across the bog. To his left, Zelman heard Huang swear and hit the deck. "He's got me pinned!"

Zelman didn't have time to stop and check that his comrade was still in one piece. Lewis had caught up, and they sprinted side by side around a tangle of fallen trees, rifles up and ready.

The grey was standing up to its knees in the water, staring dumbly as the two men sighted down their rifles. It had no mouth, but Zelman was sure he heard it hiss in surprise.

He shot the bastard between the eyes. The kickback was vicious, but the grey split like a melon. Didn't quite flip arse over apex, as Nyssa would've put it, but the effect was still satisfying. Zelman panted, the stink of gunpowder in his nostrils. "Two down."

"God dammit," Lewis said, grinning good naturedly. "I've winged two today. Thought that'd be my first confirmed kill."

"There'll be more," said Zelman. The grey had left a stink on the back of his tongue, and he spat in the dirt in his feet. "There's always-"

A shimmer in the corner of his eye. Zelman spun.

If he'd been paying attention, like his training demanded, he might've been able to shout a warning, but he'd been distracted by Rookies Huang and Chi advancing out of the undergrowth. The UFO at their backs was a hulking construction of shimmering steel and windows that warped like soap bubbles, so fragile it seemed he might step through them entirely. One wall of the craft had been blown to shit in the crash, exposing the guts of the craft, dark corridors and banks of flashing lights and engines vomiting green light like the plasma weapons the creatures carried.

From that darkness came something Zelman had never seen before.

It was six foot tall, maybe taller, built like a man but constructed out of what looked like shifting planes of light. A monster of glass and fire, glowing from within as it advanced out of the black. It carried a weapon like those the little greys carried, long and thin and bubbling with energy, and as it raised it high Zelman opened his mouth to scream, "Down, down!"

Chi threw herself flat and Huang was shielded somewhere behind a log, but Lewis was still dropping to one knee when the creature opened fire. Zelman was close enough to touch the man, close enough to feel the heat on his fingers, as plasma splashed across Lewis's chest. There was a sound like crockery shattering as his ceramic armour melted beneath the impact, plates popping and buckling as rivets liquefied. Zelman inhaled, breathing the stink of burned flesh.

Lewis didn't cry out, didn't scream. He tumbled back, one hand clutching his chest, the other still cradling his rifle. "I-" he gasped. A bubble of blood rose and popped on his lips. "I don't-"

The creature, monster, alien of light, whatever it was, pivoted back around the corner and vanished into the shadows of the ship. Rookie Chi was already moving, sprinting from behind the safety of her cairn of rocks and pulling an emergency medical kit from her belt. "You're fine," she whispered, pulling the cap off a syrette with her teeth and jamming it into a gap in Lewis's armour. "Keep breathing, keep breathing-"

"Fucker!" Huang was on his feet, rifle booming as he raked the UFO with lead. Zelman saw the light-creature peering out, the planes of its face shifting and glowing in the heat of the rifle spray. It had no eyes that he could see, but even so, he felt like it was staring straight through him, analysing him like an insect pinned to a board.

He counted off rounds in his head. Half a magazine left, at least. But that creature was smart, smarter than the bobble-headed greys. It would wait them out, let them empty their magazines. Then it would duck out again, and who knew who it'd fire on first? Him, Chi, Huang? Would it finish off Lewis as he lay bleeding?

He understood what his sister had done, now. The moment of hesitation. Kill or be killed.

"Cover me!" he shouted, and ran for the craft, even as Chi called his name. Huang was still peppering the opening, but the fire slackened as Zelman hit the wall of the UFO. He could almost feel the energy creature on the far side, its breath like an electromagnetic pulse, tingling in his metal fillings.

If he knew it was there, then it knew the same. No time to second guess.

He rounded the corner with his rifle up and found himself face to face with the beast. It was quiet, chest rising and falling in some obscene imitation of breath, its skin flowing like plates of amber. The heat rising off it forced him to screw his eyes shut, and while it was only half a foot taller than Zelman he found his knees shaking.

The creature raised its weapon, and Zelman squeezed the trigger.

He expected it to fall, to bleed. He didn't expect it to dissolve, its flesh folding in like a miniature black hole, like origami crunched down small. The creature keened as it died, its cry echoing through the hollow corridors of the ship. Then, silence.

Alan Zelman panted. He ejected his empty magazine, slotted another, and crept back out the shattered wall of the ship. Chi was crouched beside Lewis, her hands inside his armour, pressing on his chest. "Is he alive?"

Chi looked up, eyes wild. "Evac. Now."

"The ship-"

"Evac!" She pulled her hands out of the rent in his armour. They were red up to the wrist. "Now!"

#

Lewis slipped in and out of consciousness on the trip back. Chi kept patting him on the shoulder while the field surgeons did their work, but by the time they landed Zelman still wasn't sure whether he'd pull through. It was all in the hands of fate, he supposed. Luck of the draw.

He didn't think about what would've happened if he'd been standing in Lewis's place. It was down to a single meter either way. One step forward, or if Lewis had been one step back...

By the time the Skyranger touched down his hands were steady again. He went through the debrief on automatic, reciting every moment with perfect clarity. He remembered each step he'd taken that day. Every pull of the trigger. He described the light creature as best he could. His chest-cam did the rest.

The exhaustion hit as he returned to barracks. The others were there: Huang, Gollnick, Shephard, White, some rookie named Hickman, his sister Nyssa, huddled together in a corner. Their whispers carried through the still bunker air. "Didn't think he'd be back so soon-"

"Yo," Zelman said. His voice was dead flat. "What's the big deal?"

Nyss waved him over, one finger held to her lips. "Ramirez," she hissed.

"Who? Oh!" First contact, he remembered. The only survivor of the team. Seeing Lewis being fast-tracked into surgery was bad enough, but for one man to have watched his three companions being gunned down... "Is he-"

"In his bunk," Nyss said. She jerked her thumb at the door. "Alone."

"You didn't talk to him?"

"We tried. Didn't want to talk back." She patted Alan on the arm. "Look, forget him. Just glad you got back okay. You got one, right? No bruises? I was worried about you, man. Spent the whole day scared that you wouldn't-"

Three men, Alan thought. Three friends. And it didn't matter what the team of in-house shrinks said.

There was no coming back from something like that. Not intact, anyway.

"I'll just be a sec," he said, shrugging Nyss away and heading for the door. The other rookies in the room quieted as they watched him, but nobody went to stop him. Nobody dared.

The door wasn't locked, and the only other person in the bunks was a big guy, dark Latino skin flat chin, hair shaved down to the bone. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing thick ropes of scar tissue, still fresh and pink. His leg was braced at the knee and a bandage was pulled tight around his temples, but there was no mistaking the man. Sergeant Jesus Ramirez.

Ramirez looked up as Zelman closed the door behind him. "What?"

"Just, uh..." Zelman's tongue was stuck. "We..."

"What?"

"I was out today," he said. "Shot one down."

"I heard."

"I saw some real weird stuff."

"Lose anyone?"

"Nearly."

Ramirez nodded slowly. "Hell of a thing." His voice was soft, gentle. It didn't fit his hulking frame. "They tell you about me?"

"A little."

"That's all you need to know." Ramirez hunched on his bunk. The top of his skull nearly brushed the mattress above, but he didn't seem to notice. "Be out there again soon, I figure."

"You, uh..." Zelman coughed. "You're sort of legendary. I was wondering if you had..."

"Tips? Man, I was just in surgery for two weeks. They had to stitch parts of me together I don't even know the names of." Ramirez grinned. It was a sickly smile, full of teeth, and it made Zelman shudder. "My advice is quit. Just get the fuck out."

That was when Zelman saw the steel in Ramirez's hands. His service pistol, shining in the dorm lights. "Um," Zelman said. "You sign that out?"

Ramirez shook his head. "Get out of here, man. You don't want to see this."

Zelman was frozen in place. He reached for his own pistol instinctively but it wasn't on his belt – he'd checked it in upon returning, like every other recruit on base. All he had was his fists. "Put it down."

"I'm not gonna waste your time," Ramirez said. The pistol rose up. "Last chance to go."

"Damn it, don't-"

Zelman reached out, but he moved too slowly, the air thick around his hands like treacle. The pistol shot was deafening in that small space. It rang in his ears like a great cymbal, brass crashing over and over, shaking his teeth, blurring his vision.

The other recruits were bursting into the room behind him, shouting, screaming for help, but Alan couldn't hear them. His whole world was a gunshot, followed by silence.


	4. Chapter 3: Operation Cold Shield

******Chapter 3: Operation Cold Shield. Port Said, Egypt.**

"So the little ones with the huge heads, they have an official name now."

"Yeah?"

"Sectoids."

Squaddie Nyssa Zelman grimaced. "Doesn't have much of a ring to it."

"Such is bureaucracy." Squaddie Adam Lewis was already armoured up and checking the breech of his shotgun. "And the big glowing asshole that shot me? He's an Outsider."

"What, he's lonely and misunderstood?"

Lewis laughed at that. "You know Huang? He wants to call them all Xenos."

"It has more of a ring to it than Sectoids, at least." Zelman turned, holding her arms up over her head as the ready team checked the buckles on her body armour. "Hey, guys. When're we getting something worth wearing? You saw what a close range shot did to Lewis's chestplate."

Lewis grinned, rapping on his sternum. The skin beneath his armour was a mass of scar tissue, but he'd been lucky. Had the Outsider hit him a foot higher, he'd have been dragged home headless. As it was, he'd spent a week in intensive and another three basking in a nutrient bath, waiting for his flesh to regrow. Now, straight out of the tank, the brass had decided he was ready for battle. Not just that – they'd pinned pips on his shoulder as well. Now he was an Assault Specialist, Squaddie rank, which sounded no better than a cabin boy to Lewis's ears.

Zelman had taken a step up the ranks as well. The rifle she was carrying was taller than her, bolt action, scoped out to half a kilometre. Sniper Specialist Zelman. It sounded good, Lewis thought. Tough. Not the sort of name you'd ask out to coffee, though. Then again, he'd met a whole long line of intelligent, attractive women since arriving at XCOM, and every one of them scared him as much or more than the Sectoids.

The readyman finished buckling Zelman's armour into place. "Good to go," he said. "And I hear the research department is pumping something through. Carapace shielding. I've played with a prototype, but you guys might have the finished product by next mission." He slapped Zelman and Lewis on their shoulders in turn. "Good luck. Bring me back a pyramid!"

The Skyranger's jets were already revving up. Two other soldiers were waiting, strapped into their seats. Lewis knew the younger of the two men – Michael Richardson, a heavy weapons specialist, three day stubble and brown hair swept back across his forehead. The kid looked scared, but not so scared he that he'd run. Good enough.

The other, he hadn't met properly. He'd passed the guy in the barracks the day before but hadn't had time to say hello – too many new faces these days, too many introductions. Tough looking son-of-a-bitch, boxer's chin and a piercing through his right eyebrow. He had that slit-eyed expression like he was measuring everybody up at once. Fair enough, Lewis thought, seeing as he was doing the same.

He held out his hand in greeting. "Lewis. Squaddie, Assault-"

"Hey, buddy." The other man took his hand and shook hard enough to snap Lewis's arm off at the shoulder. "I heard about you. Back from the dead, huh?"

"Weeeeeell..." Lewis grinned. "They do good work in medical."

"You're ready to fight, though?"

"Can't say no, can I?" He peered at the man's chest, reading his nametag. "Adam Rudd, huh. Two Adams in the same ship has to be good luck."

Rudd didn't smile. "Sergeant Rudd, actually."

Lewis's smile fell away. "Uh. Sorry, sir."

There was a pause. The back tray of the Skyranger creaked up and locked in position. Then Rudd started laughing. "Shit, man! I'm just playing around. People call me Santa."

Across the other side of the craft, Zelman raised one eyebrow. "Santa?"

Rudd tapped the pack strapped to his side. Lewis could just see a heap of medical equipment peeking from beneath the fold of his satchel. "Because I bring the presents to all the good boys and girls."

"You're one twisted man," Zelman said, settling back with her hands behind her head. "Wake me when we're in Egypt."

The Skyranger tilted, shuddered, adjusted, and lifted smoothly into the skies. They were off.

#

If Squaddie Nyssa Zelman had to summarise Egypt in one word: hot. In three words: hot as balls.

They'd landed two hundred meters outside a construction site where, according to reports, multiple X-rays had been seen yanking and bagging bricklayers on the way home from shift. The area had been evacuated, which only left a sweep-and-clear.

Zelman would've preferred they nuke the site from orbit. It was a dusty hell-hole, wind sweeping down the streets and filling her eyes with grit. The street stank of dog shit and the so-called construction site looked like a third world derelict. Three stories of bare concrete, scattered brick and scrappy graffiti.

Even so, it felt good to be off the Skyranger and in the combat zone. She couldn't explain why, but the two weeks she'd spent on base learning her way around her new rifle had been hellish. She flinched every time a siren sounded, and the nightmares crept in the moment she closed her eyes. On repeat, every night, in high-definition surround sound, she saw the grenade erupt beneath the feet of the two greys in the supermarket, and as the fire enveloped them she saw they weren't greys at all but Rookies Chi and White, torn apart by shrapnel. She saw the true greys lifting their weapons, plasma igniting the air overhead.

In her dreams, she never ducked fast enough.

But now, on the ground, with that new rifle cradled in her arms (a Barrett M98 with conspicuous XCOM branding), she felt calm. Pure. On base, she had to worry about the walls being so close, about when she'd next be allowed to see the sun, about how to keep the anger inside. Here, she was paid to be angry, and the only thing she had to fear was not getting angry enough.

Sergeant Rudd... _God, what kind of a name was Santa,_ she wondered?... took the lead, sprinting to the tall outer wall of the construction site and surveying the wreckage left inside, before waving the squad through one by one. Zelman found cover behind a heap of shipping crates and peered over the lip. In the evening gloom she could make out the silhouettes of an earth mover, a forklift, shipping crates and port-a-potties, stacks of bricks and sacks of concrete powder, but no greys.

Lewis was by her side, panting heavily, rifle up against his shoulder. "Maybe they got bored and went home?" He laughed nervously, the grenades on his belt jangling. "Uh, I hope."

"Yeah, you wish." Sergeant Rudd was motioning them to stay down as he crossed the open dirt and peered around the side of the main construction – a three story building, two walls missing, completely open to the elements. "He's a bit of a cowboy, isn't he?"

Lewis wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Just remembered. I did hear about the guy before. You know, cafeteria chat. He was doing peacekeeping in Malaysia when a UFO came down. Locked himself in his apartment with fifty other people and held off a three day sectoid assault with a bolt action rifle and a chainsaw."

"You believe that?"

"Not a word."

Rudd was coming back, rifle at the ready. "Okay, back way is clear. We'll head along the east wall of the compound. Zelman, set up a covering position behind those bricks. Lewis, Richardson, up front."

Zelman snapped the bipod on her rifle into position. Sergeant Rudd might've been snappy, but it was good to be getting orders. It narrowed her responsibilities down to a tight focus – stay in cover, shoot the bad guys, don't get killed. She swept back and forth across the empty site as Richardson took the lead, his massive LMG swinging from his shoulder holster, Lewis and Rudd close behind. They were slinking along the rightmost wall, pressed against the concrete, and just as the three men moved out of sight behind a shipping container...

A flash of grey in the shadows of a distant crate.

"Contact!" Zelman shouted, and fired. The boom of the rifle filled her ears, but she could already tell she'd missed. The grey was moving fast considering its tiny legs, scampering like an eager puppy across the hard-packed clay. It had a friend, too. Keeping to the shadows, weapon in hand, plasma boiling from thin vents.

She couldn't see the rest of the team from where she was stationed. "Contacts!" she called again. "Two, moving in fast! Can't you-"

The rapid thud of gunfire echoed off the steel crates. She heard Rudd screaming.

For a moment she was frozen, caught behind her cover, the rifle heavy in her hands. She'd been told to stay put less than two minutes before, and now...

More gunshots. The chatter of rifle fire.

"Fuck it," Zelman growled, and ran.

She crossed the open ground between her pile of bricks and a yellow forklift, abandoned with its forks still held high, keys dangling in the ignition. She could see the other three now, pinned against the east wall of the compound, Lewis behind a port-a-potty and Santa on the ground, firing in steady bursts. The two greys were less than fifty meters away, secure behind a line of pile of steel rebar, but as Zelman watched one poked its ballooning head over the top and was neatly clipped by one of Rudd's wild shots. The grey tumbled back out of cover, gun slipping from its long, slim fingers.

Zelman was fuelled by instinct. Her rifle was too long, too cumbersome for this sort of range. Instead, she drew her pistol from her belt holster, squinted, and fired. Two shots in the grey's gut put it down for good, but the other was still moving, crawling on its belly behind the rebar.

"Lost it!" she called, and that was when Lewis rounded his port-a-potty at a sprint. The Squaddie roared as he crossed the stretch of open soil, and even as the second grey was scrambling to bring its weapon to bear, Lewis thrust his shotgun over the pile of rebar and fired.

The shell casing bounced off the pebbles with a metallic ting. Lewis panted, sweat running from his forehead. "Fucker," he spat. "Zelman, you alright?"

"Fine, damn it, I'm fine! Check your corners!" Zelman pressed against the side of the forklift, her breath coming fast and heavy. "There's gonna be more. There's always more!"

It was like the universe enjoyed proving her right. Lewis was still pumping another slug into the chamber when two more squat shapes skittered from the darkness at the far end of the site. "Down!" she cried, just as green fire lashed out of the black.

Lewis was smacked to the ground like the hand of God had slapped him head over heels. "I'm good, I'm all good!" he called, but Zelman could see he wasn't. There was a hole in the back of his armour the size of her fist, and the smoke rising from it was black and sickly. She could smell the barbecued pork tang of plasma-fried flesh. Despite the wound, he was clawing his way to his feet. "I'm okay, just shoot the bastards!"

There wasn't time to draw a bead on the greys with her rifle – her sidearm would have to do. Zelman sighted and slammed the trigger back. On the far side of the shipping containers, Richardson was laying down a steady stream of fire with his LMG, the roar of his weapon echoing off the steel tankers and reverberating between concrete sheeting. It rattled Zelman's teeth in her jaw, but she kept her aim steady. "They're falling back," she called, "they're falling-"

It came from behind. A flash of light at the edge of her vision, leaping out of the furthest reaches of the construction site, a shadowed corner she'd never considered a threat until that moment. The corner that Rudd had peered at ten minutes before and declared clear.

She had a moment of deja-vu, clear and piercing. _I've been here before. This is just my dreams. Nothing to worry about._

Then pain, and fire, and black.

#

Squaddie Richardson was hosing the two greys, his LMG bucking and chattering in his gloved hands, when he saw Zelman fall. They were separated by twenty meters of open ground and a forklift, but through the cabin glass he saw the plasma splash across her torso, throwing her hard against the forklift door. Then she tumbled, fell, and vanished from sight.

Richardson wanted to scream but he didn't take his finger off the trigger. "Sergeant, Zelman's down! Sarge, she-"

More fire flew past, close enough to burn the whiskers from Richardson's cheeks. Lewis was pressed up against the back of the port-a-potty, shotgun across his knees, fumbling shells into the breech. "Oh fuck," he whispered, one shell slipping from his fingers. "Fuck! Is she okay? Oh God, oh God-"

"I need support, Lewis!"

Lewis didn't reply. The man was gone. His pupils were tiny, terrified flecks, and if he'd even heard Richardson shouting he gave no sign. The squaddie rounded from his cover, pumped his shotgun and fired blindly into the dark. Empty shells bounced on the dirt. "Fuck you!" Lewis screamed. Spittle flew from his lips. "Fuck you, fucking die!"

It was Sergeant Rudd, in the end, who got his sights on the two greys. He crouched low, sighted, exhaled, and fired. The first sectoid spun around at the impact, skull shattering as it hit the floor. The second ran back into the dark, the green glow of its weapon shimmering like a tracer trail.

Richardson popped the magazine on his LMG and reloaded with shaking hands. "Nice shot, Sergeant."  
Rudd licked his lips. "Awesome. You watch up ahead, I'll check Zelman."

"You need backup?"

"I'm all good," Rudd insisted. "Take care of Lewis."

Richardson swallowed hard and backed against the outer wall of the site, watching the shadows, the weight of the LMG almost overwhelming. Beside him, Lewis was starting to calm. He cradled his shotgun like a lover. "Is she okay?" Lewis whispered. "She's okay, right?"

Thirty seconds later, Sergeant Rudd was back. Richardson could see from the set of his shoulders that everything was not okay. "How bad?"

"Bad enough." Rudd didn't meet Richardson's eyes. "We've got one in the building up ahead and at least one sheltering in the rubble on the north-west flank. What're you going to do about it?"

Richardson could barely bring himself to speak. "Get it done, sir."

This wasn't Richardson's first excursion out of base. He'd accompanied rookies Huang, Wise and Shephard on their first callout to a convenience store in Pasadena, and he'd killed there, although from such a distance that he hadn't seen the impact of his fire. They'd rewarded him by slapping a pair of Squaddie pips on his shoulders and shoving a machine gun bigger than God into his hands, and now he was on the front line.

But he had orders, and orders were to be followed. He made for the half-finished building at the back of the site, a three-walled prefab construction that looked like it was held together with spit and rubber bands. He moved fast, head down, and even when the whoosh of plasma sounded in the dark he didn't take his eyes off the cover up ahead. Fire licked around his temples as he hit the wall running.

The X-ray was waiting, weapon still smoking green. Richardson didn't give it the chance. His LMG bucked hard against his shoulder and the X-ray was cut in half, fingers still twitching on the trigger of its gun.

"Sarge, one down!"

"Watch left!" Santa was closing the gap with Lewis not far behind. "There's still those fuckers in the-"

Richardson spun. The half-constructed prefab he'd entered was a two-story building, windows missing, open to the wind and rain. He had a clear line of sight up a bare concrete stairway to the second floor, and in that darkness he saw slick, black eyes.

#

Sergeant Adam 'Santa' Rudd was five paces behind Richardson when he saw the grey dart across the top of the stairwell. "Fire, fire!" he called, already pulling the trigger. Richardson opened up as well, and for a moment the stairwell was lit in strobe. Clouds of concrete chips filled the air and the whine of ricochets echoed in the black.

Then, silence. Rudd pressed low against an upturned plastic barrel, waiting for the smoke to clear. "You see anything?"

"Nothing, Sarge."

"Shit." He remembered the weeks spent in Malaysia, organising the men and women who'd protected their apartment block during the abductions, building barricades and running buckets of fresh water up and down the stairs whenever fires broke out on the roof. The steady bang of his father's rifle, slamming into his shoulder until he developed a bruise the size of a baseball, livid yellow like Saturn's rings.

All he'd had to do then to keep the people moving was sound like he knew what he was talking about. Now, with Zelman almost certainly dead and Lewis barely hanging on to sanity, he needed that skill more than ever.  
"Squaddie Lewis," he hissed. "Are you paying attention?"

Lewis's gaze darted around the construction site. His shotgun trembled in his hands. "Yeah. I got it."

"Watch the left. Richardson and I will take the stairs."

Lewis nodded. "Sir."

"What'd I just say?"

"Watch the left, sir."

"Good man." He slapped Lewis on the shoulder. "Get it done."

He crossed the open floor of the building with Richardson by his side, approaching the stairs with his rifle up, doing his best to watch every corner at once. The grey he'd seen run past had vanished – no scraps of flesh, no bloodstains. Just bulletholes stitched across the concrete, chips like golf balls taken from the stairs.

He motioned Richardson forward, covering the kid's flank. They had to be somewhere above, he knew. The greys hadn't retreated in Malaysia. They weren't going to retreat here. Every one of the bastards was wired to kill until they were killed in return. But if they fucked up and one of them got driven out into the districts of Port Said...

He'd just reached the top of the stairs when he heard Lewis scream. "Sergeant! They're coming!"

Rudd spun, just in time to see Lewis, still at the foot of the stairs, raising his shotgun to his shoulder. One of the greys had jumped from a window on the floor above, landing in the dirt less than a meter away from the Squaddie.

Lewis fired. He was so close that the X-ray didn't collapse so much as erupt, leaving Lewis spitting slime. But it was the second X-ray Rudd was worried about – he'd seen it leap from the next window along, land in a spray of pebbles and skitter on all fours behind an earth mover in the centre of the construction site.

Rudd didn't hesitate. "Cover me!" he told Richardson, and ran for the open window. Only one floor down, he told himself. He'd done worse in Malaysia.

It wasn't much consolation.

He dropped, landing in the dirt with a thud that jarred his teeth. The grey was peering out from behind the earth mover, considering, and Rudd looped left, coming around the back side of the vehicle. It was still looking the wrong way when Rudd rounded the giant steel scoop and pressed his rifle to the back of its skull.

In any other situation he'd have demanded the creature lay down its weapons, but this wasn't ordinary combat. This was an invading force, and the concept of taking prisoners could get fucked.

The X-ray turned. It made a sound like a hissing cat.

He pulled the trigger.

#

They swept the rest of the site, all the way to the back corners. Nothing was hiding there. Even so, Rudd forced Richardson and Lewis to do a second round, poking behind every pile of bricks and inside every port-a-potty.

It was a delaying tactic, and Rudd knew it. He simply didn't want to walk back to the entrance, past the forklift, and the woman they'd left behind.

But, in the end, he ran out of excuses. "Site is clear," he mumbled into his headpiece. "Coming home, Commander."

Pournelle's voice was hushed, husky. "As you will, soldier."

He led the two squaddies back through the quiet site, over hard-packed dirt, past the earthmover and the concrete slabs and, finally, to Zelman. She lay on her stomach, where she'd landed after bouncing off the forklift. The hole in her armour was the size of a dinnerplate, and through that hole Sergeant Rudd could see things he'd never wanted to see. Her head was twisted sideways, and her eyes were closed.

She almost looked peaceful.

"Get the medivac team," he grunted. "Bring a stretcher." He didn't look up as Richardson and Lewis ran off to the Skyranger. All his attention was on Zelman. The first of their number to fall, he thought. Almost certainly not the last.

He settled down into the gravel beside her body, and waited. "So it goes," he said. "So it goes."

#

The bump of the Skyranger on the landing pad jolted Lewis awake. He'd been napping, although he had no idea how he'd managed to drop off. Exhaustion had simply stolen up and shrouded him. He'd dreamed of green light, and pain, and...

Zelman. He glanced left, to the black zippered bag laid out against the bulkhead. Suddenly, the burns up his back from the plasma bolt didn't seem half so bad.

"Hey."

Lewis looked up. Sergeant Rudd was staring, fixing him with his blue-eyed gaze. "What?"

"You didn't kill her," Rudd said. "None of us did. It was bad luck. That's all it is, in battle. Good decisions running up against bad luck."

"Whatever you say, Santa." The back ramp was already dropping. Lewis checked the breech of his shotgun, shouldered it, and unbuckled the safety harness. "Merry Christmas to you too."

Technicians were already at work on the Skyranger's engines, hooking up fat fuel pipes, clearing leaves and tree debris from the air intakes. One of the techs, a kid with swept-back brown hair and a scrubby beard, stood back respectfully as the surgical team rushed in with their gurney and wheeled out the body bag. Then he peered inside at the blood running slick up the steel floor of the Skyranger and whistled through his teeth. "Jesus, what a mess, huh? Man, I'm really sorry. But, uh, you might want to go past the workshops. That new armour tech they're working on, the carapace? I hear it's already in production. You should go down, get sized-"

Lewis's fist rose up, unbidden, and suddenly he had the technician by the throat. "Now?" he whispered. "You get it done now? Not yesterday? Not last fucking week? You have the armour ready now?"

"I..." The technician's eyes bulged. "I don't-"

"Lewis. Leave it." It was Rudd, one hand on Lewis's shoulder, easing him back. "The guy didn't know."

Lewis took one long, slow breath, and let the technician fall. "Yeah," he said. "He didn't know." It hurt to turn and walk away. His boots left bloody footprints. "They never fucking do."


	5. Chapter 4: Banished Hammers Pt 1

******Chapter 4: Banished Hammers and Shattered Hearts, Part 1**

******Interlude**

"I need one alive."

It wasn't what Commander Pournelle had wanted to hear. He'd been awake near two days straight, waiting for results from the lab as to the masses of extraterrestrial weaponry they'd been flying back from Operation Cold Shield. The fact that all of those weapons had detonated upon the death of the owners hadn't stopped Doctor Vahlen's team from peeling circuits out of the wreckage that could do more for weapon's technology in a week than Lockheed and Metal Storm had achieved in a decade. Even so, they still didn't have anything concrete. Nothing Pournelle could put into the hands of his soldiers.

He took a deep breath and clenched his hands into fists behind his back before replying. "Why?"

Dr Vahlen tilted her head. She'd been awake just as long as Pournelle, but somehow she still managed to look fresh behind her thin, wire-frame glasses. The woman was a machine, Pournelle thought. He couldn't bring to hate her for it. If everyone working for XCOM had her energy, they'd have beaten the invaders back weeks ago.

"Why not?" she said. "The autopsies on the Sectoids show an extremely complex neural network wired throughout their craniums – a merger of flesh and electronics, far beyond our understanding – but without live impulses, I can't examine how that network functions. I suspect their plasma weaponry interacts directly with their nervous system, but how can I test that hypothesis on corpses? Corpses that, I might add, continually return here suffering massive bullet and explosive trauma-"

"And you want me to bring one back... how?" A muscle twitched in his brow. "You want my people to risk their lives for your research?"

"Commander." Vahlen's voice was steady and stern, as if she were lecturing a child, and it made Pournelle feel very small. "If your people don't bring an extraterrestrial back alive, we will all die. I want to win this war, and this is a necessary step. Otherwise..." She waved one hand. "We have a device."

"A device? That's all?"

"A stunning device. It links directly with the circuitry throughout the Sectoid brain."

"But you haven't tested it?"

"On livestock yes. How can I do any more than that when you haven't brought me back a live specimen?"

"Yes, yes, I know, God dammit!" Pournelle hung his head. His voice was echoing back off the walls of the laboratory, and he knew he'd overstepped the line. Shouting was the child's way to solve problems, he thought, and one he'd eschewed since his early days as an officer. But now, with one XCOM Squaddie dead in the ground and more reported abductions than he could respond to, he found it harder and harder to keep his calm.

"Okay," he managed. "This device. How does it work?"

"Point and click, Commander," Vahlen said with a hint of a smile.

"And what do you call it?"

******Chapter 4: Banished Hammers and Shattered Hearts**

Rookie Michael Sullivan turned the device over in his hands. "The arc thrower?"

"Yes, soldier," Sergeant 'Santa' Rudd sighed. "The arc thrower."

"It's a taser."

"It's much more advanced than-"

"It's an alien taser." Sullivan leaned over and nudged Rookie Jake Solomon in the ribs. "Opinion? Taser, or no taser?"

Solomon raised one weary eyebrow. He'd been up all night, gut turning, worrying about missions to come. Rookie he might be, but he understood more about squad rotation than most of his fellow soldiers. With twenty other rookies fresh on base all going through rapid re-training, he knew it was only a matter of time before someone upstairs decided it was time for a trial by fire.

"Alien taser," he said finally. "So what?"

"So what?" Sergeant Rudd's eyes bulged. "So what? If you don't know how to operate this when the time comes, you're going to be on a slab! Rookie, that is your life you're holding!"

"Sarge, please-" Solomon sighed. They'd been listening to the same lecture on repeat since being assigned to Sergeant Rudd's command. Word throughout the barracks was that he'd lost a promising young Squaddie on his last drop, and now he'd been assigned to babysit the rookies until he got his nerve back. Which was fine with Jake Solomon – it'd been a year since he'd done live-fire training, and any time spent on the range was good time – but he didn't like the idea of boarding a Skyranger with a Sergeant in command who wasn't sure of himself.

And then, just as he'd feared, the klaxon sounded. Solomon and Sullivan winced as the siren pounded through the barracks, echoing off the walls and shaking the bunks. "All stations, all stations," came the command. "Away teams Alpha and Beta to ready room. Repeat, Alpha and Beta-"

Rudd hadn't flinched when the speaker sounded. He straightened his shoulders, took the arc thrower from Solomon's hands, and licked his lips expectantly. "Both teams," he said, eyes flashing in the barrack lights. "Something big. Get your kit, boys."

#

Away team Beta was made up of five men – Rudd, and the four rookies he'd dubbed his boys, Solomon included. Bedford, Sullivan, and Young were the other three, and Solomon had had the chance to get to know each in turn during his weeks on barracks. Bedford was chiselled from rock, an Australian with a jaw like a sledgehammer and a quiet tone that put Solomon in mind of his highschool principal – always watching, always evaluating, ready to strike like the fist of Zeus. Sullivan was the old man of the group, even though he didn't look a day over thirty-five. His curled moustache and quick eyes led Solomon to believe he had more combat experience than he'd let on. Fresh rookies didn't have the guts to wear that sort of moustache, and they didn't laugh like Sullivan either. The rookies Solomon knew kept quiet, building an air of mystique, but Sullivan told filthy jokes like it was going out of style.

Finally, Young. A man who never went anywhere without a paperback stuffed in his pocket. Solomon liked to read as much as the next man – hell, he had a small library at his home – but Young flipped pages like a man possessed. And while he didn't share in Sullivan's jokes, Jake Solomon could always see the corner of Young's mouth twitching at the punchlines.

Now, all five men were assembled in the ready room, along with Away Team Alpha – Corporal Huang, Corporal Shephard, Squaddie White, Squaddie Gollnick, and a fresh-faced rookie Solomon had passed in the hall called Hickman. Ten soldiers, Solomon thought. He'd never heard of a Skyranger setting off with any more than five.

Something was very wrong.

He snapped to attention as Commander Pournelle strode through the side door and up to the stage. The Commander looked exhausted, head down, shoulders slumped, and he snapped the order to stand at ease without even looking up from his tablet. "God dammit," Solomon heard him mutter. "God damn... Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Listen up, I'm going to make this quick."

Solomon's pulse quickened in his chest as Pournelle brought up a series of satellite images on the main briefing screen. "We have two incident sites," Pournelle said. "A UFO landing in the midwest, and a bogie shot down fifteen minutes ago eighty kilometres north of Stalingrad. Two sites. Two teams." He looked first to Away Team Alpha. "Corporal Shephard. Your team will attend the UFO landing in Nevada. Eliminate all hostiles and bring back the bodies." He spun, fixing his gaze on Sergeant Rudd. "Away Team Beta will attend the UFO crash landing north of Stalingrad. We expect little resistance, so it's a good opportunity for you rooks to gain some combat experience. Doctor Vahlen would also like us to bring back an X-ray alive for... further study. You'll be supplied with arc throwers, so if you find any X-rays with crash injuries, make use of them. But do not, I repeat, do not jeopardise your safety just to keep the good doctor happy. I want you all back here alive, understood?" Pournelle glared at everyone assembled in the ready-room, jaw jutting. "Dismissed."

Only once Pournelle was out the door did Solomon allow himself to exhale. Young and Bedford were looking at each other with worried expressions, but Sullivan had the furrowed brow of a man deep in thought.

"Russia," Sullivan said. "Been a while." He looked up at Jake Solomon, a grin spreading beneath his thick moustache. "Don't forget to bring your camera, eh son?"

Solomon tried to smile back, but he couldn't bring himself to fake it.

#

Away Team Alpha's Skyranger landed just after noon, Nevada time. Squaddie Wendy Gollnick was the first down the back tray, surveying the woodland through the scope of her assault rifle. The landing zone was clear – a square kilometre of firs, mountains rising up in the distance to snow-capped peaks, a stream running through the scrub so clear that she could see every white pebble resting on the bottom. She tilted her head to the wind and was just able to make out the whine of engines somewhere ahead – the UFO, maybe idling, maybe preparing to lift off with its cargo of abductees.

Corporal Eliza Shephard was already out, barking orders. "White, Hickman, we're heading north around the hill. Huang, up the slope with Gollnick and cover us."

"Aye aye." Corporal Huang scampered ahead, his colossal sniper rifle slung over his shoulder. "Gollnick, you coming?"

Gollnick nodded. She'd never considered herself one of the forward team – her training had focused almost exclusively on providing combat support, not front-line fire – but the chain of command existed for a reason, and she wasn't about to break rank. They climbed the hill together, Gollnick and Corporal Huang side by side, until they reached the peak. Thick oaks shuddered as the wind rose up, the spiny bushes at their base bent almost flat. A grey hare darted from the undergrowth, and Gollnick barely held back from firing reflexively and turning the animal to mush. The hare sniffed the air, nose twitching, but when Gollnick bent on one knee and reached out the hare bounded away into the tall grass and vanished.

"You see that?" she whispered. "They don't abduct the rabbits."

"Seriously?" Huang was by her side, panning across the field below, the scope of his sniper rifle pressed to his eyesocket. "I can see the UFO. Rabbits aren't the priority."

Gollnick thought back to her childhood. Her parents' red-brick house with the little back garden, her white and brown rabbits milling in their cage. The way they nibbled at her fingers when she fed them carrots through the bars. It'd been weeks since she'd seen a tree, and God knows how long since she'd touched anything living beside other men and women, trading quick handshakes and fist-bumps as they passed in the corridors.

"Think they'd let you keep one on base?" she said.

"What, a rabbit?" Huang tugged at his thin moustache. "Can't hurt to ask, I guess... Contact!"

Gollnick pressed low against the oak and sighted on the field. Three sectoids, crossing from right to left, headed for a tall rock outcropping, their oversized skulls bouncing on their pencil-thin necks like dashboard bobble-heads. If they'd seen any of the XCOM troops they gave no indication, which put Huang and Gollnick in the perfect position to rain down fire.

Huang pressed one finger to his ear. "Shephard. Three moving ahead of your position, east to west. Initiating fire." His hands moved too fast for Gollnick to follow. He propped his sniper rifle against the tree, drew his pistol, cocked and fired in one swift motion. The first sectoid stumbled, clutching itself, and that was the opportunity Gollnick needed. She raised up and put a three-round burst through the alien's midsection while it was still trying to get to its feet.

The sectoid crumpled. Huang whispered, "Nice. Xeno down. Two still out there, though."

"Xeno is a silly name," Gollnick replied. The two other sectoids had reached the shelter of the rock, and she was struggling to find a clean line of fire. "You should call them..." She stopped. Something had caught her eye in the distance, and she squinted through the sun glare.

"What..." Gollnick whispered, "the fuck... is that?"

White, Hickman and Corporal Shephard had been advancing around the base of the hill, moving to flank the two sectoids, but as they reached the end of a shallow stream they'd startled something hiding around the bend. What rose up out of that stream struck Gollnick mute.

Sectoids were easy. She'd blasted them at close range, long range, blown their heads off, cut them down with rifle fire, watched them laid out on the slab back at HQ. Sectoids were passė. These things were abominations, nightmare creatures made flesh. She sighted on the first, trying to find her range, and saw an upper torso, flesh puckered and rotten, bristling with tubes and knotted cables. A face that could only glare, skin scarred by repeated surgery, mouth sealed by intubation. The lower half gone, replaced by steel and carbon. The engineering that had replaced the creature's legs spat fire and plasma beneath it as it drifted across the grass, providing some cruel parody of flight. It set tiny spot-fires in the brush as it advanced on the hill, and Gollnick found her hands shaking as she tried to keep her aim.

Beside her, Corporal Huang whispered, "These Xenos are fucked up." He raised his rifle and adjusted his scope. "Block your ears-"

But Huang didn't get a chance to pull the trigger. Gunfire roared at the base of the hill, and Gollnick peered around her cover to see Squaddie White opening up with his LMG. "Suck it!" he called, as the first floating creature was slammed back by the weight of lead. "Suck it long, and suck it hard!"

The floater was flipped end over end, sparks and black blood gouting from wounds the size of coke cans. It drifted, righted itself, roared, and erupted in a hail of shrapnel as something in its lower half sparked and ignited. Gollnick ducked as the creature hit the hard-packed soil, shards of steel ringing off the tree-trunk, taking chunks out of the bark inches from her nose.

The steady _whump_ of plasma fire rang out from the field below. Gollnick peered out just far enough to see the two remaining sectoids crouched behind their rock cover, firing wildly, while the pair of living floaters retreated back up the stream. Squaddie White was scrambling back on hands and knees, trying to find some safety in a grassy hollow. "Cover me!" he called. "Cover me, god dammit!"

Gollnick looked to Huang. The sniper nodded. "On three."

She was ready. Beside her, Huang raised his rifle, sighted, exhaled, and pulled the trigger. The crack of gunfire was deafening, but it was worth it for the sight of one of the sectoids falling back, its skull split like a cantaloupe. The second sectoid stopped firing a moment, confused, and Gollnick took the opportunity. She charged down the hill, skidding on wet grass, and jammed her rifle over the top of the rock ledge into the remaining sectoid's face.

Three rounds between the eyes put it down. Gollnick slumped against the rock, panting, fumbling for the release on her magazine. "Corporal!" she called. "Got eyes on those two flying things?"

The reply froze her down to the bones. "Gollnick, they're coming in high! Down, down, stay down!"

Gollnick threw herself flat, fumbling a fresh magazine into her rifle, as the whirring of engines rose up overhead. The roar of the floating creatures closing the distance. The liquid whoosh of plasma.

Fire boiled over the lip of the rock, and Gollnick bit back a scream.

#

The Skyranger bumped and rocked as they came into land. Solomon was strapped in tight, but Bedford was already unstrapping, like he was desperate to get out of the craft. "Calm down," Solomon said. "Safety first, don't you know?"

Bedford grinned uneasily. He fumbled in his ration pack and came out with gum, which he chewed manically. "Yo, Solomon. What'd you do, before this? I mean, military, sure-"

"I designed tactical systems," Solomon said. "In fact, I worked on the systems deployed in XCOM HQ."

Bedford raised one eyebrow. "No kidding?"

"No kidding. Commander Pournelle is, right now, monitoring our position and vital signs on a system I helped create."

"Damn. So... Do you know how this is gonna play out?"

Solomon laughed. "I built the GUI. Doesn't mean I've got any idea how Pournelle is going to set this up. Besides, I think ground decisions are in Sarge's hands. Isn't that right, Sarge?"

Sergeant Rudd might've been about to reply, but the Skyranger had settled and the back tray was dropping. "Chitchat later," Rudd said. "Move, move, move!"

They ran out as one into the woods. All was silent, apart from the distant crackle of flames. Ice crunched beneath Solomon's boots. The Russian woodland was thick, firs clustered together so tight he could barely see more than fifty yards ahead, their branches drooping beneath the weight of snow. The forest was a pristine National Geographic photograph opportunity, untouched by human hands until the Skyranger's VTOL jets had melted circles from the snow and burned great black holes in the grass beneath.

They'd passed over the ruin of the UFO upon their approach. It was a huge silver lozenge half buried in the snow, flames boiling from long rents in its outer skin, a trail of debris and trees crushed flat leading back for half a mile. But it'd been an eight hour flight from the US to Russia, and the Xrays could've gone anywhere in that time. Maybe they were stealing children from a nearby town. Maybe setting up an ambush.

Solomon watched the trees, watched the shadows. His breath came fast and quick.

The rest of the team – Young, Sullivan and Sergeant 'Santa' Rudd were taking up positions against the trees. Rudd made quick hand motions, directing the team to move along the peak of the hill, and Solomon obliged, dragging his feet through the heavy snow as he moved from tree to tree.

Bedford was close behind, assault rifle at the ready. "Hey, Solomon."

"Yeah?"

"Want some gum?"

"No thanks. I'd just swallow it."

"Huh. Well, just wanted to say, if the shit starts, let me up front."

"You want to bag one, huh?"

Bedford laughed nervously. "Don't you?"

Sergeant Rudd held up a closed fist, and the team came to a halt, finding protection behind the thick firs. They'd advanced on the UFO, and Solomon could now make out the curve of its bulkhead, tilted against the slope where it had come to rest. As far as Solomon could tell, nothing was moving in that twisted mass of steel.

Sergeant 'Santa' Rudd pulled a small pair of binoculars from inside the pack at his waist and focused on the snowy plain below. "You see how the left side has been gutted?" he said. "Easy entry, but they'll know that too. If there's any resistance, it'll be concentrated around that point. We come in from the south. Sullivan, Young, you're up front. Solomon and Bedford, keep close behind. Fifteen meter spread."

"We shot the fucker down, Sarge," Bedford protested. "Look at it! Nothing living in there, I bet."

Jake Solomon was about to reply when Sullivan cut in. "You ever seen a man live through a hard landing in an Apache?"

Bedford paused. "I, uh... no."

"I have," Sullivan said, grinning beneath his moustache. "And people pulled out of a burning jet that came down in the woods. Men crawling out of an APC that hit an IED, too. So if you think all those Xrays are putty in there, sure. Go check out the UFO yourself. We'll see you back at the 'ranger."

Solomon grinned at Bedford's expression. "I think," he said, "we'd better take every precaution. Right, Sergeant Rudd?"

Rudd tucked his binoculars back in his pack and grimaced. "Damn right. Let's move in."

The ramshackle remains of an old barn or smoking shed lay half-buried by snow, and Solomon was the first to reach the chest-high ruin of its outer wall. Sullivan and Young were moving up on the right, Sergeant Rudd a few paces behind, and Solomon rested his finger on the trigger as he watched the UFO from behind the pile of brick.

He wondered what Pournelle was seeing now, how the Commander felt watching their movements on the interface he'd built. Soldiers reduced to blips of light on a tactical screen. He wondered whether Pournelle still remembered that these were men he was directing and not just tools, automatons carrying assault rifles.

Ten seconds later, all of that didn't matter.

Young and Sullivan were fifty yards from the downed ship, close enough for the flames to reflect on their polished armour, when the creatures boiled out from inside the craft. They were unlike anything he'd seen before on the chest-cam replays spooled over and over back in barracks – gangling, half-steel horrors with their legs removed, replaced with pipes and wires and cold steel all twisted and hammered into something like a jet assembly. They drifted five feet above the grass, their engines spitting flames behind them, melting the snow to black slush.

"Fire, fire!" Sergeant Rudd called, and the entire team poured it on.

In the end, Solomon couldn't tell who hit what. The two Xrays were still lifting their weapons to bear when they were slammed down by the weight of lead. The first spun about in the air before tumbling to the ground, blood and oil squirting out at high pressure, its rotten arms dragging snow-angel patterns as it spasmed and died. The second was only winged, and it leaked black fluid from its mess of steel tubing as it flipped out of control, finally landing on its side less than ten yards from where Sullivan and Young were waiting.

It was Sullivan that broke cover and crossed the gap, jamming his rifle into the dying creature's chest and cutting off its cries with a single squeeze of the trigger. The creature jerked, sighed, and went silent.

Solomon peered out from behind the wall, rifle still up against his shoulder. "Down?"

"Very down." Sullivan gave the thing a hard kick. The steel of his armoured boot rang against its artificial carapace. "What a monster, huh?"

Solomon had to agree. The scars where the creature's torso had been welded into its electric lower half were livid yellow, pulsing with rot and infection. Even dead, he had to pity the things. The sectoids were bad enough, but this... he couldn't even tell whether he was fighting a footsoldier or some engineered slave.

"Hey, Solomon." Rookie Sullivan was by his side, rifle at the ready, his moustache twitching as he inhaled whatever corrosive gases were leaking from the creature's corpse. "Leave it for the collection team, huh? Sarge says you and me are up front."

"Sure." Solomon's mouth was dry as he popped his empty magazine and reloaded. The weight of jacketed lead was comforting. "Ready when you are."

It was hard for Solomon to keep his terror from leaping up and taking control of his shaking fingers as they crossed the open space between the treeline and the downed UFO. The closer he got, the larger the craft seemed to become, until it loomed over the heads of the entire team, blocking out the afternoon sun entirely. He could see through the huge rent in the side of the ship, into dark corridors where lights on strange consoles blinked in sequence. A smell wafted out of that blackness that tingled in the back of Solomon's throat. Metal reduced to puddles of liquid by the impact of landing. Circuits leaking black smoke.

Or maybe, he thought, he was smelling death. The corpses of the craft's pilots strewn throughout the bays, mashed like soft fruit against bulkheads, shredded by the impact of whatever missile had shot it down.

It was bizarre, comparing the sight of the UFO to what he'd experienced while working on XCOM's tactical systems. Landscapes reduced to vectors, bogeys just blips skimming low across abstract continents. He'd applied for the ground assault crew specifically because he wanted to put his own systems to the test, to see whether his millions of lines of code would stand the test of a real engagement.

Now, with the hull close enough to touch, he was regretting his curiosity.

Sergeant Rudd was at their backs. "Solomon, Sullivan, inside! Bedford, Young, keep right!" Solomon didn't argue. With his rifle up and his heart in his throat, he dashed through the gaping hole in the steel wall and into the cool shadows of the UFO.

It was quiet in the corridors, as if the craft itself were dampening the sound of Solomon's footsteps. He pressed against the wall, feeling the ribbing of his body armour catch against rivets and seams. He and Sullivan had slipped through into a chamber the size the pool-hall back at barracks, empty aside from a console flashing green and red lights in rapid sequence. The back side of the chamber opened up into a corridor, and at the far end of the corridor was what looked like a flat plane of energy, a door of blue light that shimmered like pearl.

Rudd had caught up, watching the rear. Where Bedford and Young had gone, Solomon had no idea. Around the back, most likely. The only way left to go was forwards.

Solomon took a long, slow breath, and advanced to the shining door. He could feel the static rising off it, the crackle and hum of energy, tendrils of lightning like inquisitive fingers leaping out and stroking his breastplate.

He looked back at Sergeant Rudd, who had taken up position two paces back. "What now?"

"Open it and immediately fall back. Be ready to fire."

Open it? But how? There were no buttons on the energy door, no handles. Solomon reached out and, barely daring to breathe, pushed his index finger into the plane of light.

The door blinked out of existence so fast that Solomon jumped back, startled. The sudden flash of light had blinded him, but as he blinked away tears he could make out a chamber on the far side of the door, a wide room with bowed steel walls and a polished metal ceiling. The far ends of that chamber were shadowed, and standing up out of the shadows were...

Solomon couldn't breathe, couldn't think. His finger tightened on the trigger. "Sarge!"

There were three of them, not sectoids or the hideous mutated flying things they'd gunned down outside, but men, humans in neat blue suits... but somehow wrong. Even as he staggered back against the bulkhead, Solomon knew that whatever was rising up out of the darkness wasn't truly human. They were too tall, too thin, and they moved like marionettes jerked along by invisible strings. Even their suits and sunglasses looked false, not fabric at all but flesh rippling like fabric, skin curling in a crude parody of clothing. Imitation people inside imitation suits.

The first of the thin men loped across the chamber, one hand rising to adjust its glasses, the other holding a weapon that glowed with energy.

Solomon fired.

The thin man didn't just fold and die but exploded, rupturing like a balloon. Guts and gas sprayed out in a cloud as the creature fell, choking the room and forcing Solomon back. He tripped and stumbled, coughing, vision blurred by tears as the gas stung his eyes like acid. "Sarge!" he called, unable to see whether Rudd and Sullivan were at his back or had retreated down the hall. "Sarge, help!"

Green fire lanced out of the dark, cutting through the cloud with surgical accuracy. There was no pain – just a curious warmth as Solomon slid down the wall, hands crossed over his belly, his rifle sliding from his fingers.

"Sarge?" His voice was a bare whisper. He smelled flesh cooking and knew it was his own. There were popping sounds like gunfire, but whether it was his squad or the thin men advancing was impossible to tell. The sounds grew distant, tinny, like he was hearing them from across a great divide. "I think..."

Darkness crowded in at the edges of his vision. Solomon closed his eyes.

#

It was one PM in Nevada, and Corporal Huang was under fire.

The two remaining floaters – xenos, he decided, was a shitty name after all – were pouring plasma down on his position. Whenever he tried to peer out from behind his tree and take a shot they opened up again, blasting chunks out of the wood and sending him scrambling back for cover. And whenever they gave him half a moment to grab his sniper rifle and adjust his scope, they would turn their attention on Rookie Gollnick, who was still trapped behind the tumble of boulders where the two sectoids had died.

He tried scooting down the slope of the hill, but there was too much open ground. He'd be gunned down before he made it to the safety of the bushes. "Need some covering fire up here!"

"Gotcha!" That was Corporal Shephard down below, safely tucked around the bend in the stream. He heard her shotgun roar, and the enemy fire slackened. That was all Huang needed. He scooted on his belly around the trunk of the tree, rested his rifle on a lump of hard sod, sighted, and fired.

The rifle kicked against Huang's shoulder so hard he thought he heard something snap, and the nearest floater erupted in midair as his slug took it through the middle, shredding organs and circuitry in equal measure. The second floater spun, panicked, and through his scope Huang could make out every hideous detail of how its breathing mask was grafted to the flesh of its skull, how its arms were criss-crossed with stitching and scar tissue, the aftermath of repeated surgeries.

His hands worked automatically, ejecting the spent shell and ramming the slide home. His finger rested on the trigger as he sighted on the alien's mid-section. _Breathe_. Just as he'd been taught in Specialist training, as he'd rehearsed a thousand times on the range. _Exhale, pull..._

He didn't get the opportunity. Far down at the base of the hill, Corporal Shephard was moving fast. She broke from the cover of the curving stream to dash across the open ground, and was standing directly beneath the second floater when she fired, blasting a hole as wide as a dinner plate through the creature's undercarriage. The beast roared, and Shephard threw herself aside as it hit the earth. Dirt and flames sprayed in great arcs as the creature flailed, coughed, and died.

Huang relaxed his finger from the trigger. "Sheeeeeit," he whispered, watching Shephard coolly slide a fresh slug into her combat shotgun. "That's one hell of a lady."

The five regrouped at the base of the hill: Huang, Shephard, Gollnick, White and the rookie Hickman, who'd been crouching behind a boulder throughout the entire firefight. "I had a clean shot," the kid grumbled. "Could've taken them."

"And?" Corporal Shephard was down on one knee, binoculars in hand, scanning the treeline to the north. "Next time, take the shot." She snapped the binoculars back on to her belt. "The bogey is up ahead. Big door facing south. White, you lead. I don't want to lose any more body parts."

That was when Huang noticed the slice up her left cheek, a cut as long as his finger running from Shephard's chin to her ear. "Shit, you need that stitched?"

"Now? Really? Priorities, boy." Shephard grinned, showing off her bright teeth. "Will you support from the rear, Corporal?"

"Only if you quit the puns, Corporal."

Shepard's grin grew wider. "Deal."

Which, in the end, left Corporal Huang two hundred yards back from the alien craft, secure behind a tree while White, Hickman, Shephard and Gollnick advanced across the open ground. He knew he was in the right position – elevated, fully loaded, and with a clear line of sight – but he still felt as though he'd abandoned his own team. His finger rested lightly on the trigger as he panned back and forth across the hull of the ship, waiting for any hint of movement. Shephard and Gollnick were flanking what he assumed was the front door – a huge sheet of energy rippling across the bulk of the UFO – while White and Hickman were headed for an opening on the right corner, intending to slip through and meet up with their Corporal inside.

It was a solid strategy, apart from one detail – Huang wasn't there to assist.

"Don't fuck this up," he said through gritted teeth. Shephard was pressed against the hull, reaching through that strange forcefield, her rifle at the ready. White and Hickman were down low, wading through a shallow stream that led up to that side entrance. Everything was smooth. Everything was fine. They were professionals, he reminded himself, and professionals got it done.

Shephard stepped through the forcefield, and Huang's jaw tightened. "Don't fuck this up. Don't fuck-"

Shephard motioned Gollnick forward. They were standing beside a bulkhead that blinked with little amber lights, and it slid open as Shephard approached. What Huang saw through his scope made his gut tighten into a knot the size of his fist.

A control room, or what he assumed was a control room, lined with tiny lights. Three small figures, sectoids, massed around a central console, blinking owlishly as the door slid open. And behind them...

He'd seen that thing before. A creature shaped like a man, muscled, armoured, but glowing from inside like it was constructed out of shifting planes of light. The outsider.

Huang had time to shout, "Shephard, get down!" before all four of the creatures opened fire, and the forward team vanished behind a wave of plasma.

#

Russian winter was cold, no doubt, but Sullivan had been through worse. Desert cold was agonising – when the sun dropped on the dustbowl, all the life just went out of the earth and left it barren. Snow was almost comforting.

What he couldn't deal with was seeing Solomon on the floor. Kid wasn't dead, so far as he could tell, but he wouldn't last long. He'd only caught a glimpse of the thin men when Solomon had opened the door, but it was enough to tell him numbers and positions. Two of the bastards, pressed up against the outer wall. Hidden, but not completely protected.

Sergeant Rudd was at his back. "We've got to pull him out," Rudd said. "I've got you covered, just move, move, move!"

"Sir!" Sullivan didn't hesitate. There was no fear, only cool adrenaline pushing him on. He rounded the corner with Rudd beside him, one shoulder hard up against the wall, rifle at the ready. The two thin men were silhouettes against the blinking consoles, their spidery limbs throwing obscene, jittery shadows across the floor.

The first was raising his weapon to fire when Sullivan blew his head off. The creature clutched itself like there was still some semblance of life in those artificial limbs, before collapsing like a deflated pool-toy, gas hissing from the ruin of its face. But the second thin man was close behind, pistol humming, plasma spilling from its vents.

That was when Rookie Bryan Young punched through the UFO's back door with Bedford by his side. Young fired first, rifle bucking in his hands, and the thin man collapsed, bleeding something black and viscous from its chest. Its blood sizzled where it hit the floor, like an Alka Seltzer on the tongue, and Sullivan recoiled at the stench. Then Rudd was at his arm, rifle up, shouting, "The arc thrower! Stun the fucker, stun it!"

The creature was on its knees, guts tangled around its wrists, but it was still trying to draw a bead on the soldiers when Sullivan pressed the bulb of the arc thrower to its head and depressed the trigger. He had a moment to think: _God, what if Vahlen miscalculated?_ before the air sparked and electricity licked between the end of the device and the thin man's skull.

The creature jerked, slipped, and fell flat. Sullivan exhaled. "He's down, Sergeant."

"Hit him again to make sure!" Sergeant Rudd was on his knees beside Solomon, bandages and needles in hand, hands working so fast they were almost a blur. "Come on, keep breathing, keep breathing. Don't die on me, don't you dare-"

Rudd hit the catch that opened Solomon's chestplate, and Sullivan winced when he saw the expanse of blackened flesh beneath. Rudd worked with patient hands, disinfecting and binding with the firm but controlled motions of a career Corpsman.

"Is he okay?" Sullivan asked.

"He'll live." Sergeant Rudd jammed two hypodermics into the soft flesh of Solomon's neck and depressed the plungers. Solomon jerked on the floor, eyelids fluttering. "The wound is already cauterised. Just need to keep his heart pumping long enough to get him back to the Skyranger. Blood plasma and adrenaline should do-"

Solomon spasmed as the plungers hit home, hands curling into fists. Then he coughed, blinked, and looked straight into Sullivan's eyes. "Holy shit," he whispered. "I think I fucked up, Sarge."

"You did fine," Rudd said, patting Solomon on the shoulder. "You just lie still."

But Solomon was already pushing off the ground, snatching at his rifle. "I'm all good, Sarge-"

"Stay on the fucking ground!" Rudd pushed Solomon back down with a finger in the centre of his chest. "If you move, if you goddamn move-"

Sullivan's attention snapped around. He wasn't watching Solomon writhing on the floor any more, or Young and Bedford setting up position around the chamber. He was transfixed by the door in the back of the compartment, another shimmering wall of energy that flexed and hummed in time with his heartbeat.

He could hear something beyond that door. Footsteps. A low, near-subsonic growl.

"Sarge!" he called, swinging his rifle to bear even as the energy-door blinked and vanished. "We've got-"

Tall, shimmering, bursting with light. A Greek God advancing across the battlefield. An outsider, weapon in hand.

His finger tightened on the trigger, but not fast enough. He felt the plasma impact before he heard it – a hit from less than a meter away, harder than a baseball bat to the ribs, that lifted him off the ground and threw him against the bulkheads.

From where he lay, Sullivan couldn't see the outsider, or his squadmates. Just the rapid crack-crack-crack of rifle fire, the shouting, the panic echoing off the steel walls. He reached down and traced the hole burned in his armour by the plasma. His hand came away sticky with blood. He could feel it inside the carapace plating, pumping hot and slick.

Pressure, he thought. Have to keep pressure. But when he pressed down with both hands he realised he couldn't feel the ends of his fingers. Everything tingled. His eyelids seemed impossibly heavy.  
He could hear Rudd shouting his name. He tried to reply but his tongue was stone.

In the end, it was easier to just close his eyes.

******TO BE CONTINUED...**


	6. Chapter 4: Banished Hammers Pt 2

******Chapter 4: Banished Hammers and Shattered Hearts, Part ********2**

Squaddie Andrew White was five meters from the hull of the UFO when the doors slid open and revealed the sectoids inside, huge black eyes reflecting his own terror back at him. He would've raised his LMG and hosed the bastards, but Corporal Shephard and Squaddie Gollnick were standing in the way. "Down, down, down!" he shouted, and darted the last few steps to the UFO, slamming into the hull shoulder-first as the X-rays vanished from sight. "Corporal, are you-"

"Go right, go right!" Plasma was pouring out of the UFO, hard bright lines of light illuminating Shephard and Gollnick as they crouched just inside the safety of the doorway. "Cut them off!"

White hesitated. "You need backup-"

"Go right and give us that fucking backup!" Shephard jammed her shotgun around the doorway and fired blind, and White heard one of the X-rays gurgling as it died. "Flank, motherfucker, flank!"

There was no disobeying Eliza Shephard when she spoke like that. White motioned Rookie Hickman to his side. "Be ready to shoot this time," he growled, and followed the curve of the UFO anti-clockwise as he split for the rightmost door.

The UFO had landed at the head of a thin stream, and its back door opened directly on to the water. White slowed as the door came into view, taking in the treeline beyond the UFO, and the large log laying across the streambed, large enough for a sectoid to crouch behind. He held up a hand, fist closed, and nodded towards the log, before motioning for Hickman to loop around.

The kid understood and split further right, creeping through the tall grass with his rifle up hard against his shoulder. Behind him, White could hear the crack of gunfire, Gollnick screaming, "Two more, two more!" It took every scrap of self control he had not to run back and pour on the lead. Orders were orders. "See anything?" he called to Hickman.

Hickman was a thin kid, dark skinned, with a sharp Aussie accent and a finely carved chinstrap goatee. Every time he'd bumped into the kid in barracks he'd been grinning, talking cars and girls and games White had never heard the names of. Now, those thick brows were furrowed with concentration. "I see... Fuck!"

Hickman fell flat in the grass, his rifle spitting fire. "The log, behind the log!"

White could see it now, the thin grey crown of the sectoid's head protruding above the line of the log. Hickman had it pinned but White couldn't draw a bead. "Kill it!"

"I got it, I got it!"

"Then take the fucking shot!"

Hickman let loose another burst. The air filled with splinters, and the sectoid hissed in surprise. "I... I missed!"

White spat in the grass. "No shit, kid! Coming through, watch your fire!" He leaped into the stream and sprinted to the cover of a shelf of stone. The sectoid was crouched, unable to run back to the safety of the UFO without exposing itself.

White took the time to put the X-ray clean in his sights before blowing the alien to scrap. Half a second with his finger on the trigger turned the creature into a long grey smear, guts and cartilage spread from the log to the door of the craft. "You see that?" White crowed. "Aim, shoot, hit! No messing around! Door, left side!"

Hickman scowled as he moved up, splashing through the stream. "Yes, sir!"

White held back on the urge to slap the kid across the back of the head. There was a time to talk shit and a time to shoot shit, and this was the former. They took up positions on either side of the door, and White dared a glance inside. He could see the two remaining sectoids taking up position behind a central console, their weapons flashing as they fired on Shephard's position. The outsider loped across the chamber, eight feet tall and shimmering as the plates of its armour shifted like liquid glass, and as White watched Shepard pivoted out from her position behind the doors, fired her shotgun into the outsider's gut, and pulled smoothly back into cover.

The outsider fell, gurgling, hands curling into claws, and faded from existence like a bulb flickering and dimming. The two sectoids behind the console didn't seem worried. They were firing hard, working in concert to keep Shephard pinned.

White met Hickman's eyes. "You see them?"

"Sure, sir. I see them."

"You got a bead?"

Hickman raised his rifle, lower lip white between his clenched teeth. "I got him."

"Take it!"

Hickman inhaled, exhaled, and pulled the trigger.

The hammer-crash of rifle fire boomed inside the UFO, and the two sectoids ducked down, hissing furiously. "I missed!" Hickman called, "Sir, I fucking missed-"

The air sizzled and ignited. A line of green fire hung in the air between the sectoids and Hickman's chest. The kid looked down at the hole in his armour, the flames boiling from his ruined chest. White smelled melting plastic and skin.

"Fuck," Hickman whispered, and fell back against the bulkhead. His rifle slipped from his fingers. Blood bubbled over his lips.

He slid out of the doorway and fell into the stream, blood pluming outward in the water, and even before the weight of his armour dragged him down Squaddie White knew the kid was dead.

#

Rookie Paul Bedford was so close to Sullivan when he fell that he felt the hot splash of blood against his bare cheeks. The outsider stood before him, eight foot tall, shimmering, a beast of legend, and he found his finger frozen on the trigger.

_Oh God_, he thought, as the X-ray raised its rifle to bear. _I never got to write my novel._

Then came a sudden boom, a hail of gunfire that shocked Bedford back to attention. The outsider screamed as it fell, the light behind its armour fading. Then it was gone, simply folded out of existence as whatever energy sustained it ran dry.

Solomon lay on his back, panting, his rifle propped awkwardly against his armpit. "Did I get it?"

"God damn it, Rookie..." Sergeant Rudd slapped Solomon on the shoulder before crossing the chamber to attend to Sullivan. "The old man's alive. Hurt bad though. He's not walking out of here." He sprayed some expanding foam compound into Sullivan's wounds and turned the man on his side to keep him from choking on his own blood. "Gonna need an evac. Bedford, you think you can get back to the Skyranger and organise a stretcher?"

"Aye aye," Bedford said, then snapped around. Something had moved beyond the vast doorway through which the outsider had appeared. "Sarge, down!"

Beyond the door was a long chamber, the walls and floor gunmetal grey. At the far end was a second door, and through it Bedford could see three small shapes. Sectoids, moving fast, taking up positions behind the ridges and alcoves of the UFO.

Bedford fired from the hip, rifle bucking in his hands, and one of the X-rays went down in a spray of blood. The other two were luckier, slipping effortlessly into cover. Bedford crouched low, wary of oncoming fire. "Sarge, what do we do?"

Rudd was still feverishly patching up Sullivan, binding deep wounds and jabbing wicked looking needles into his neck. "I can't leave him!"

"They're right fucking there, Sarge!"

"Then shoot the bastards!" Rudd unclipped a smoke grenade from his belt. "Search and destroy," he hissed, and tossed the grenade through the door.

The smoke grenade was a little steel cylinder, about the size of a can of red bull, that spun across the floor and popped with a sound not unlike a balloon being pricked with a pin. The smoke that poured out was thick and purple, stinging at the back of Bedford's eyes. Sure, the X-rays couldn't see them advance, but their vision was just as limited.

"Young," Bedford grunted. "You with me?"

The rookie grinned nervously. "Why not?

And together, they ran into the smoke.

#

From her position in the main doorway of the UFO, Corporal Eliza Shephard had a perfect view of White and Hickman flanking through the back entrance, but there was nothing she could do to help when Hickman fell back, burning from the inside as the plasma ate through his ribcage. "Gollnick!" she called. "I need cover, now!"

But Squaddie Wendy Gollnick had split, running from her position at the UFO doorway back into the treeline. Shephard watched incredulously as the woman crouched behind a thick oak, her rifle forgotten, cowering with her hands over her head. "I can't!" she cried. "I just can't, I-"

"She's gone, Corporal!" That was Huang, still safety atop the hill, tucked behind his tree. "She's going nuts!" Huang raised his rifle and fired mid-word, the roar of his sniper rifle echoing off the hills. "I'm empty!"

"God damn it! Do I have to do everything myself?" Shephard peered around the door, into the darkness at the heart of the UFO. Sectoids scuttled in the shadows, moving between their consoles. She pumped a fresh slug into the chamber and waited for her shot.

Shephard didn't get the chance. Green fire licked out of the dark and smashed her to the ground, leaving her gasping, spitting, her shotgun slipping from her fingers. She clutched her chest, tracing the line of shattered ceramic. She felt blood.

More fire lanced out of the UFO, and Shephard scooted back on her butt until she was out of the doorway. Every breath sent bolts of pain across her chest. She fumbled for the medical kit at her belt until she found the little canister of foaming coagulant, a squeeze-tube of material that sealed the wound and numbed her roasted flesh. The pain faded by degrees, and even though she knew it was shock setting in she found herself not scared but angry.

Her shotgun was heavy in her hands. Pure, like an extension of her hands.

"White!" she shouted. "You alive?"

The call came back. "Under fire, but I'm still tickin'!"

"Flank on three! Huang, provide fire!"

"Aye aye!"

She forced herself to her feet, using the shotgun as a crutch. Her wound tugged, sending a fresh bolt of pain into her lungs, but she breathed deep and knew she was ready.

"Go, go, go!"

Squaddie White's LMG roared, the noise colossal in that tight space, as Shephard rounded the corner and entered the UFO. She took in the scene at a glance: the two aliens crouched on opposite sides of the chamber, one distracted by White's onslaught of lead, the other cowering beside the bulkhead, its plasma weapon humming and ready to fire.

Huang's rifle cracked, and she felt the air beside her ear tug as a bullet whipped past. The sectoid pinned by White's fire tumbled back, its face reduced to a red ruin. That left the creature hiding in the corner.

She could've chanced a shot from across the chamber, but she was too angry for that. She closed the gap at a sprint, shotgun up hard against her shoulder, until the alien was close enough to feel the heat rising off the barrel.

She thought of Hickman falling back into the stream, and the pain in her chest, and how it had felt to watch Squaddie Zelman's body being lifted off the Skyranger the week before.

It could've been her, she thought. Could've been anyone.

She fired.

#

Rookie Bryan Young tried to recall some parallel from his gigantic collection of science fiction novels as he charged into the smoke with Bedford by his side. There was shades of Starship Troopers in all of this, he thought. Catchphrases, jingoistic heroism. The inevitability of death.

He'd hoped for something a bit more dignified when he signed up for XCOM. An elite unit working to exacting specifications, wiping out the alien invasion force with a combination of tactics, 22nd century tech, and the weight of numbers. But all that gone out the window when Sullivan and Solomon had been hit. To paraphrase German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and he was close enough to the enemy to make contact with his fist.

All he could do was run, and pray.

Plasma flashed out of the gloom, cutting through the purple cloud, and Young juked left towards an alcove with Bedford close on his heels. "They're fucking shooting at us!" Bedford cried, as if it had come as a surprise. "The fuckers are shooting!"

"No shit!" Young leaned out from the alcove and fired back, hosing the X-ray's position until the bolt locked down on an empty magazine. He couldn't see anything through the smoke, not the aliens or even Sergeant Rudd's position behind them. For all he knew, the two suckers were flanking them right now, sneaking through the labyrinthine corridors of the UFO, preparing to blast them in the ass.

Bedford leaned past him and fired into the dark, and recoiled as he was answered with plasma. "We're gonna die," he said, his voice unusually calm. "Nice knowing you, Young."

Young tried to slam a fresh magazine into his rifle but the steel slipped in his grip, rattling on the floor. "Don't say that!"

"Just a statement of fact, man. I just thought you should know-"

"Shut up!" Young groped for the magazine on the floor and brushed something hanging on his belt. A grenade.

A grenade in an enclosed space, he thought. Thrown blind, into smoke, with minimal cover. It was suicide by another name, but staying put was just as bad an option. What, he thought, would Johnny Rico do?

"Fire in the hole!" he called, and tossed the grenade overhand. Then all he could do was plug his ears and hope.

The explosion was a punch in the gut that left Young staggering, his head ringing and vision blurred. He couldn't breathe, let alone see what had happened beyond the smoke cloud. Bedford was swearing beside him, hands clamped over his ears. "Are you crazy?"

Young blinked away tears. He could just make out the fallen magazine on the floor, and snatched it up, reloading his rifle and yanking back the bolt. The rain of plasma had stopped, and the cloud was shifting. He waited, finger on the trigger, heart thudding against his chest.

The cloud cleared, revealing steel walls scarred by flame and shrapnel. He could just make out the corpses of two sectoids lying amidst the debris: one lying gasping, its guts tangled on the floor, and the other a smear of flesh running from floor to ceiling.

From the corridor at their backs, Rudd called out, "You got 'em?"

Young lowered his rifle. His brow was slick with sweat. The gutted sectoid heaved, then fell still.

"Yeah," he called. "Got 'em all."

#

Away Team Beta's Skyranger touched down a shade before noon, twenty-four hours after they'd left XCOM headquarters. Sergeant Rudd watched quietly as the medics carted Sullivan down the back tray, his body limp, respirator clamped down over his nose and mouth. The man would live, they assured him. Rudd's medical attention in the UFO had saved his life. Even so, Rudd didn't feel like celebrating. It was too easy to close his eyes and see Squaddie Zelman in place of Sullivan, her corpse concealed inside the plastic folds of a bodybag.

He'd been lucky. They all had.

It was common enough for Commander Pournelle to be waiting to shake hands with the returning soldiers, but Rudd hadn't expected to see Doctor Vahlen by the landing zone. He'd never been introduced to the Doctor – what business did a grunt have with the head of XCOM Research, anyway? - but he'd seen her more than a few times, pacing the halls with a tablet beneath her arm, lost in thought. He'd heard stories, too. Vahlen was the only person on base who could stare down Commander Pournelle. When she said jump, Pournelle took a run up.

So he was surprised when Vahlen approached and offered her hand. "Sergeant Rudd, yes?"

"Uh." She had one hell of a handshake for such a slight woman. "That's me."

"I received word that you had captured a-"

"It's in the back." He jerked his thumb towards the Skyranger. "Nearly lost a man getting it, but the arc thrower worked."

Vahlen peered at Rudd over the rim of her wire-frame glasses. "The other soldiers call you Santa. I suppose this is my Christmas present, yes?"

"Hah. Yeah. I get it." Rudd forced a smile, but it felt awkward, plastered to his face. "I have to go speak to my men, so if you don't mind..."

"Of course." Doctor Vahlen stepped aside, and Rudd made his way through the ready rooms, stripping off his armour and racking his rifle. The barracks were three levels down, beneath bedrock, and the elevator moved slow. He had a long time to think about everything that had gone wrong. Solomon being shot. Sullivan nearly bleeding out on the floor. The flash of plasma, so bright it had seared trails of light behind his eyelids.

The elevator stopped, and he stepped out into the barracks.

Bedford and Young were waiting, slouched on the sofas in the rec room. Young was already thumbing through a paperback, but Bedford just looked tired. Baggy eyed, head in his hands, slumped like he was carrying his two injured colleagues on his shoulders. "Yo," Rudd said. "Look at me. We have a debrief in five minutes, so I need to say this now. You did good. Sullivan and Solomon are going to recover, no problems, and the thing we brought back-"

"They lost one," Bedford said.

Rudd's gut clenched. "What?"

"Away team Alpha." Bedford nodded towards the bunkroom. "The kid. Hickman."

"Jesus." Sergeant Rudd looked at the closed door leading to the bunks. "I don't-"

"Leave it, Sarge." Bedford stared, his eyes black hollows. "They've got their thing. Let them work it out." He waved towards the pool tables. "You think that debrief can wait ten minutes?"

Rudd swallowed. His throat was tight and his skull pounded like there was too much blood up there to keep in.

"Yeah," he whispered. "Why the hell not."


	7. Chapter 5: Operation Enduring Mother

**Chapter 5: Operation Enduring Mother**

The Skyranger skimmed low above the Munich skyline, landing skids brushing antenna and startling flocks of pigeons from their nests, before circling the Hochhaus Uptown twice and coming in to land on the rooftop. Corporal Eliza Shephard was the first down the tray and onto the bare concrete, sweeping across the open expanse with her rifle up hard against her shoulder. "Clear, clear, clear!"

The rest of the team were close behind: Sergeant Adam Lewis, Sergeant Andrew White, Sergeant Wise, and bringing up the back, Lieutenant William Huang, his ridiculously oversized laser rifle resting over his shoulder, wind in his hair like he was some Pantene shampoo model. God, she hated the Lieutenant, with his perfect smile and his gun taller than he was. Cocky bastard, too good looking to ignore.

Huang pointed out cover around the rooftop. The Hochhaus was a skyscraper, primarily commercial, thirty-eight stories tall and wrapped in glass like a shining phallus thrusting up out of the earth. The top of the Hochhaus was under construction, littered with shipping crates and scaffolding and plastic sheets twisting in the breeze. Somewhere amidst that mess were a whole host of X-rays. XCOM had gotten the call, frantic, panicked, the German translation coming through in fits and starts – an abduction in the heart of the city, aliens pouring through the ventilation shafts, snatching up office workers on the top level and spiriting them away into the skies.

Shephard had always wanted to visit Munich. The Symphony Orchestra was world-renowned, and the Munich Hochschule for Music and Performing Arts... her heart thudded harder at the thought of a half-hour tour. But today, they were in town for business, and that business was killing.

Huang slapped her on the shoulder as he passed. "Got your back, Vandal."

Shephard scowled. "Right behind you, _Xeno_."

"Hey, that shit isn't funny."

"About as funny as Vandal." The name had stuck after Operation Banished Hammer. Hadn't been anything left of the aliens inside that UFO but smears of blood and skin across the floor like clotted paint. She'd have preferred something like Killer or Deadeye, but she supposed beggars couldn't be choosers. It could've been worse. Like how the squad had taken to calling Lewis 'Devil-Dog' after the number of times he'd nearly died in the field and been resurrected by the XCOM surgeons. Or 'Xeno' Huang, who'd earned his nickname through overuse of shitty catchphrases.

Yeah, she thought. Vandal wasn't so bad after all.

They spread out across the rooftop, Shephard leading, finger on the trigger. They hadn't been told what to expect out there, no indication of the forces they were up against. Only that, in XCOM tradition, shit was probably about to hit the fan.

And, like clockwork, it did.

Lieutenant Huang took point, tossing his battlefield scanner overarm into the tangle of shipping containers. The device functioned much like a miniature radar, pinging off steel and flesh alike, giving the Lieutenant a clear view of nearly everything on the rooftop. Huang was crouched behind a pile of steel drums, staring at his tablet, which in turn gave him a birds-eye view of the Hochhaus.

"Two blips ahead," he whispered. "Around the back of those crates. Might by X-rays, might be pigeons." He pointed up ahead. The Skyranger had landed at the south-east corner of the skyscraper – dead ahead was a stack of shipping containers, large enough to hide any number of hostiles. Meanwhile, to the left, was two stories worth of scaffolding creaking in the wind, shored up with half-finished prefab concrete walls. A tight little maze where any encounter would be at a fatally close range.

Shephard made sure her rifle was charged. They'd issued the entire team with new, laser-based weaponry, forcing Shephard to trade in her beloved shotgun for a slick, rounded rifle that felt more like a kid's toy than a device of destruction. She'd spent a hundred hours on the range, adjusting to the weight of the gun, the way it hummed in her hands, but it still didn't feel like a real gun.

She tapped Huang on the shoulder. "You want me up front?"

Lieutenant Huang hesitated. "You want to be up front?"

"I go where you need me, sir."

Huang nodded slowly. "Take point. Just... stay safe, Corporal."

Staying safe had never been Shephard's concern. Doing the job right was the priority. She watched the skies as she advanced, Sergeant Wise close behind. Huang was keeping back, watching their advance with his sniper rifle ready, reading off his battle scanner. "Those two are moving in from your north. No idea what they are... Woah! Two more on the right, two more!"

The attack came in almost too fast for Shephard to track. Almost. To their left, from the scaffolding, came a low roar of engines. She knew that sound well – floaters, the mutated stitched-together sons of bitches, skimming low above the skyline. From the right...

They emerged together, two beasts like armoured gorillas, huge and hulking as they knuckled their way across the rooftop. Bodybuilders wrapped in steel, carrying oversized weapons, their strangely human eyes glinting in the sunshine.

Instinct took over. The floaters were coming in fast, and Shephard dropped to one knee, found her range and blew the lead X-ray out of the sky. Her new rifle buzzed, laser energy venting through hidden grills, filling her nostrils with the stink of melting plastics. Huang's laser fire lanced out from behind her, catching a second floater in the chest, and the two tumbled together, exploding as they hit the concrete.

Behind her, Sergeant White called, "What the fuck are those things?"

"Just shoot them!" was Huang's reply, and White obliged. He shouldered the chunky steel tube he'd carried off the Skyranger – a rocket launcher, five foot long, painted green with a red arrow at one end declaring THIS END TOWARDS ENEMY. The two gorillas were still coming, their footfalls thundering on the concrete. They roared, showing deep black mouths, tongues shining in the pits of their throats. God, Shephard thought. The beasts didn't need guns. If they closed the distance they could pick White off the ground and crush his head in their medicine-ball fists.

White slid a rocket into the tube, dropped to one knee, and shouted, "Fire in the hole!" Shephard threw herself down, clenching her gut, waiting for the boom.

The two armoured gorillas were less than ten meters from White when he pulled the trigger. There was a hissing sound, and the rocket launcher tube farted flame out both ends. The first of the gorillas threw one arm up over its face, and then both creatures vanished in an apocalypse of flame and shrapnel.

There was a moment when the whole squad held their collective breath. Then the smoke cleared, and the two armoured gorillas were revealed – one lying dead, cut in two by the explosion, the second twisted against one of the shipping containers, sitting in the centre of a ruined depression of concrete.

White fist-pumped the air. "You see that! Left a crater!"

Sergeant Lewis, standing a few feet behind White, wasn't laughing. "That fucker's still moving!" he called. Lewis was a big hunk of meat, bearded and severe, and Shephard knew he'd taken fire before – hell, he'd been there when Nyssa Zelman had been blasted in the back, a day that XCOM Commander Pournelle was still trying to live down. She'd expected Lewis to be frozen in fear, to hold back behind cover. She didn't expect him to vault over his barricade of wooden planking and jam his arc thrower into the downed alien's face.

There was a crackle of energy, and the alien slumped, blood bubbling on what Shephard assumed were its lips. Lewis stood over the body, the arc thrower still spitting sparks. "Target has been neutralised," he grunted.

Shephard stared at the body. The creature was still breathing, but only barely. The gorilla comparison had been right, but the alien was hairless, even scaled, its eyes sunken beneath a simian brow. It looks strong, top heavy, nothing but muscle inside its armour plating.

It looked, she thought, like the aliens had watched XCOM soldiers kicking ass in the field and done their best to build an imitation.

"What the fuck it is?" White whispered. "These cocks just get bigger and bigger. I hit him dead fucking centre. Left a crater and it's still breathing. What do they make them out of?"

"I guess they drink their ovaltine, Sergeant." The smell rising off the stunned alien was enough to make her gag, and Shephard stepped back, slamming a fresh battery into her laser rifle. She missed the feel of sliding individual shells into the breech, but she couldn't deny that blowing floaters out of the sky with a sizzle of energy held a certain charm. Maybe she'd get used to it in time. "Lieutenant Xeno, orders?"

Huang scowled. "Are you trying to make me angry, Corporal?"

"Wouldn't dream of it, Lieutenant."

Huang didn't meet her eyes. "Then you wouldn't mind taking Lewis and White on a recce around the north-east corner of the site?"

The north-east corner was where the floaters had emerged from: a wild knot of scaffolding piled eight meters high, iron piping laying in piles like snowdrifts, tarpaulins slashed by high winds. It all seemed quiet to Shephard, but everything seemed quiet before things went bad.

"It's a death-trap, sir," she said, trying to keep her voice even.

"Then be careful." Huang checked the charge on his rifle, hands moving fast, automatically. "Do it right."

Shephard couldn't refuse. She motioned Lewis and White to her side and crossed the rooftop, cocking her head, listening to the breeze. The way it moved across stone and plastic was a distinct, and she drew a picture of the scaffolding in her head. Tunnels of concrete and steel...

There. A sound below the wind. A low growl, so deep that it vibrated in some deep, primal part of her skull.

Ambush.

Shephard dropped low, rifle humming against her chest. "Lewis," she whispered. "Up those stairs." She pointed to the north edge of the rooftop, where concrete stairs led up to a rooftop access door and a port-a-potty. Lewis nodded, creeping up the stairs as silently as a cat, surveying the expanse of the rooftop from up high. "White. Cut left." White did so, his LMG prepped and loaded, ready to tear holes out of anything that would appear. Huang and Wise were at her back, watching the shipping crates, making sure nothing jumped them from behind.

Nowhere to go but forward. She advanced into the mess of scaffolding and lifted a trap aside with the barrel of her rifle, peering into the gloom.

Simian eyes stared back, shining a sickly yellow in the evening light.

"Contact, contact!" she shouted, tumbling back, her finger on the trigger. Laser light flared from the end of her rifle and the plastic sheeting melted into the air, but there were too many of the things, three, four, five of the steel plated gorillas pouring out of their hideyhole and into the light.

She fell back against an air-conditioning unit and scrambled on hands and knees, putting it between herself and the X-rays. They were tearing free of the plastic now, roaring as they advanced across the rooftop, each eight foot tall and built like trucks. Shephard fumbled for the grenade at her belt and tossed it overarm, and the thud of the explosion carried through the concrete, vibrating in her guts. She didn't dare peek out, but from overhead she heard Lewis call, "Blew it in half! Nice hit, Vandal!"

"Just shoot the fucking things!"

"Yes sir!" Lewis's shotgun roared. Then, the words she dreaded most. "Can't believe it! They're moving too fast, I missed, I fucking-"

The low whump of plasma carried in wind. The gorillas were firing, and all Shephard could do was hunker down. She could hear Huang and White opening up from behind, the laser-zip of gunfire sending shivers down her spine. She was caught in the middle, pinned between two fronts. "Hit them again, hit-"

The impact was an electric shock to the gut. She stared at the huge hole blasted in the air conditioning unit, where the bolt of plasma had melted through steel and continued on to hit her in the side. Her armour was smoking. She tasted copper.

Her last thought before she slipped into unconsciousness was that the Lieutenant was an asshole. Then, there was nothing but black.

#

Sergeant Adam Lewis was up on the second level with a sweet view out over the streets and byways of Munich when the armoured X-rays burst free of their hiding place. His initial attack had gone wide, even with a clear shot down on to the bastard's heads, and then Shephard had been hit, leaving her slumped behind the air conditioning unit.

He couldn't tell whether she was alive or dead, but he knew he was angry. "Fuckers!" he said, jamming the trigger back on his shotgun until the breech locked open. His pistol was ready on his belt, and he drew it from the holster with one swift movement, exhaled, and fired into the mass.

One of the big X-rays went down kicking, a hole barely as wide as a bic pen bored through its skull. "Eat shit!" Lewis crowed. "Die, you-"

There were three still on their feet, and they fired as one. Lewis wasn't fast enough to duck, and the bolt of energy caught him in the shoulder. He was slammed back, hitting the concrete, the shock jarring his pistol out of his hands.

"Hit!" he called. "I'm down, I'm hit!" He probed the open hole in his armour with one trembling finger, expecting to feet blood and pulped flesh, but his finger brushed the underlayer of armour, softened but not penetrated by the plasma. His arm was numb from shock, but he was intact.

"Forget it!" he shouted, scrambling for his pistol. "Kill those sons of bitches!"

But there was no reply from below, just the chatter of automatic weapons and the hiss of laser beams cutting the air, and by the time Lewis was on his feet he understood why. The creatures had advanced, hulking their way across the rooftop, leaving Shephard isolated behind the air conditioning unit. Lewis could see the blood pool beneath her body widening, the slick red puddle staining the concrete.

She had minutes, maybe less.

Sergeant White was hunkered behind a barricade of 2-by-4s, and he tossed a grenade out almost lazily that landed between two of the hulks and exploded in a spray of fire and shrapnel. Sergeant Wise was close behind, ducking out of cover to laser the first hulk's face off, but there were still two coming, big and angry, muscles popping out of the gaps in their armour. Lieutenant Huang was still safe behind cover, laser-sniper set atop a bipod, finding his range. "Heads down," Huang called, "watch your lines!"

Huang fired. The rifle painted a red line of energy across the rooftop, cutting close enough to one of the hulk's heads that the creature winced, clapping one huge hand to its ear, but the shot didn't find a target. "Fuck!" Huang called. "Reloading, re-"

"This is bullshit, Lieutenant!" Lewis pumped two shells into his shotgun, which was the most he could fit in his hand at one time. "Bull! Shit!"

The hulks were almost on top of Shephard, their huge feet threatening to crush her skull into the floor, and as far as Lewis could see the Corporal had stopped breathing.

Lewis had never given two shits about the chain of command, but there were some things he couldn't abide. His back was slick with sweat and his guts were a knot of panic but he forced it down and dropped off the second story, into the midst of the X-rays. He could smell them as he landed, a thick, rotten-vegetable stench that left him gagging.

The two X-rays turned, a little too slowly, and Sergeant Lewis jammed his shotgun up into the first alien's face and fired. A trigger pull, a pump, a second pull, and the creature went down with its skull split in two.

The second X-ray was close enough to touch, and Lewis threw himself to the floor as it fired, plasma searing a hot line across his back. "Shoot it!" he called, and the staccato roar of Sergeant White's LMG filled the air. The X-ray staggered back, throwing one hand up over its hideous face, and a moment later its arm was tumbling free, severed at the shoulder, the flesh cauterised by Lieutenant Huang's laser.

The X-ray staggered, keening in pain. Lewis clutched his useless shotgun. He had the perfect angle, but no shells. His left hand stole down to his belt and caressed his pistol.

Then, next to it, he found the arc thrower. The taser device had enough charge in it for two solid hits, but there was no telling whether that would be enough. He had to trust in Vahlen, and the dubious nature of the XCOM research team.

Heart in his mouth, Lewis closed the distance and slammed into the alien, tackling it low and behind the knees. The creature fell, spraying blood in great hot arcs, and Lewis jammed the prongs of his arc thrower into the alien's raw stump.

It kicked, writhed, and fell still.

Lewis rolled away, panting, blinking the sweat from his eyes. The stench of the creature was making him gag. "Is she okay? Is the Corporal okay?"

Huang and Wise were by his side, busy with hypodermics and bandages. "She's pretty messed up," Wise said. "Gotta hope we can stop the bleeding." Wise was a big guy, hair shaved down to the knuckle, built from bricks, but even he looked terrified as he jammed a hypo of adrenaline into Shephard's chest. "Get the goddamn stretcher!"

As White sprinted back to the Skyranger, all Lewis could do was watch Wise performing chest compressions, a rapid thud thud thud, pressing deep into Corporal Shephard's ribcage. Each compression forced a bubble of blood up over her lips.

He stared at the two X-rays lying stunned on the rooftop, and all the others blown to shit, eyeballs and brains congealing on the sun-warmed concrete.

"Well," Lewis said, "at least Doctor Vahlen will be happy."

Huang spun on his heel, jaw jutting, tears gleaming at the corners of his eyes. "Go fuck yourself, Devil-Dog."

"What? What'd I say?" It was too late. Huang had already stalked away, rifle strapped over his shoulder, head hung low.

On the horizon, the sun dipped below the jagged Munich skyline.

Author's Note: Sorry it took me so long to get this new chapter posted. I've been hard at work on a number of other projects, but The B-Team is back on my priority list now.

In the meantime, did you know that I have a whole ton of other stuff to read at my site, including a completely free thriller novella packed with explosions, gunfights and... ahem... adult situations? Check it out at ?page_id=1781 !


	8. Chapter 6: Operation Swift Sword

******Chapter 6: Operation Swift Sword**

Commander Pournelle woke and stared at the blank concrete ceiling of his private quarters. For the first time in weeks he didn't feel the need to jump out of bed, pull on his uniform and sprint upstairs to mission control. For the first time in weeks, he felt rested.

Five soldiers went out on Operation Enduring Mother. Five came back, battered and bleeding but dragging with them two live specimens. Vahlen had been working the big bastards over in her chamber beneath the base for forty-eight hours. The reports were promising. Vahlen hadn't figured out how to talk to the things yet, but she'd learned a lot about what made them squeal. She'd dubbed them Mutons, based on how their organics had been artificially fused to their armour. It was, Pournelle thought, as good a name as any.

No UFOs had been sighted in two days. Sergeant Lewis was looking more and more like top leadership material, and he shrugged off burn wounds and shrapnel blasts like he was cast from iron. And Rudd was shaping up as a fine combat medic as well – his team of Solomon, Bedford, Sullivan and Young were shaping up to be a fine, cohesive unit.

It seemed as if great clouds were lifting from the horizon. God, if everything went this well, they might even win the war. Six months ago such a thought had seemed an impossibility, but now...

The phone by his bed rang, vibrating on the hook. Pournelle sighed, dug a lump of wax from his ear, and answered. "This is the Commander."

"Sir!" Panic on the far end of the line. One of the techs up in mission control. "We've just had contact from Lagos. X-rays on the ground, sir!"

Pournelle straightened, snatching for his glasses. "What, another abduction?"

"No sir! This is an attack!"

"What?"

"It's a slaughterhouse, sir! Hundreds of civilian and military dead! They're massing at the Dodan Barracks. The city's military force is being decimated!"

Pournelle squeezed the receiver so tight he felt the plastic bending. What Nigeria couldn't do would fall to XCOM, as always. But Sergeant 'Vandal' Shephard and Sergeant 'Devil-Dog' Lewis were his two most experienced soldiers, and both were bed-ridden. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Huang seemed to be developing an unhealthy attachment to assault-specialist Shephard – unhealthy because he didn't need the man flaking out when one of his squadmates was under fire. Huang had been spending altogether too much time in the infirmary over the past two days, which made him a liability.

Which meant that Rudd and his crew were the front line.

"Call the barracks," Pournelle barked. "I want Rudd, Bedford, Solomon." He paused. Heavy artillery would be necessary. "Richardson too. And is Lewis out of bed yet?"

There was a pause as the man on the other end contacted the infirmary. "Patched up as of this morning."

"No time for R&R. Get him loaded and ready. Briefing in five."

#

Assault Specialist Jake Solomon could barely bring himself to look out the Skyranger windows as they descended into Lagos. It was the fires that terrified him the most, the flares of red in the darkness. From half a mile up it looked as if the entire city was bathed in flame, a miniature apocalypse centered in Nigeria. The knowledge that every one of those points of flame was a burning car, or even a dying man, their clothes and hair fuelling the fire.

He couldn't hear the screams, but he could imagine them well enough. It was a holocaust, and they were descending into it at two hundred miles an hour.

"Hey. Specialist."

Solomon looked up into 'Santa' Rudd's eyes. "Sir?"

"Chin up, soldier. This is just another job." But even Santa looked rattled. He was gripping his laser rifle so tight that Solomon thought it might bend in his hands. "This is a rescue mission. We collect civvies and get the fuck out. No big deal. God, it's hot in here. Bedford, you got any gum?"

Bedford handed a stick across wordlessly. The Skyranger bounced as it hit an air pocket, and Solomon swallowed bile. "Do we know how many civilians are in the drop zone?"

"As many as three hundred. Maybe none."

None. Code for, everyone dead. It wasn't something Solomon wanted to think about. All the months he'd spent developing XCOM's battlefield software had forced him to think of soldiers and civilians alike as numbers, blips of light on a screen. He'd managed that. That had somehow been okay. That was war. But civilians? They could never just be dots.

"Look at me, Specialist!" Rudd punched Solomon in the shoulder hard enough to sting. "You're gonna get down there and do what you were trained to do, understand? No bullshit, no theatrics. Deal?"

"Sir!"

"Awesome." Rudd rolled his gum from one side of his mouth to the other. "Fuckin' awesome."

Solomon could feel the heat before he even stepped off the back tray.

They'd come down just inside the walls of the Dodan Barracks, the central military outpost in Lagos. The light of the flames was so intense that Solomon could barely see what he was running into, but incurring the wrath of Sergeant 'Santa' Rudd was more terrifying than staying on board. He sprinted blind into the smoke, Lewis and Bedford thundering behind him, until he came up against a tall brick wall. There, he crouched low and took stock.

The base was in ruins. Dodan was a small outpost, a barracks with a tank and jeep yard attached, but those tanks were now burning in neat rows, their treads melting into the dirt. The jeeps were overturned, blasted black. The horizon was strangled by smoke.

Worst of all were the screams. They rose above the crackle of flames, wavering, desperate. Solomon didn't understand the language but he didn't need to know those people were in pain. Somewhere amidst the tangled wreckage of cars and corpses were people that needed help.

Blips, he reminded himself. If he thought of them as anything else it'd drive him mad.

Rudd led them into the flames, the heat strong enough to blister, directing them to cover behind a head-high wall of sandbags. "Bedford, get your rifle deployed. I want you in solid, covering the north approach. Lewis, you see the second tank? Get up by the tread and watch the crates. Solomon... shit, shit, incoming!"

Solomon spun, laser rifle up hard against his shoulder. Floaters, the mutant half-steel sons of bitches he'd gunned down in Russia. First two, then two more, moving in formation above the flames, plasma rifles venting energy in their hands.

"Down, down, down!" Rudd was the first to fire, and Solomon joined him, the sizzle of their rifles louder than the crackle of flames. One of the floaters tumbled from the sky, screaming thinly as it impacted and exploded across the parade ground, but the other three slipped behind the line of burning tanks, vanishing into the shadows.

Solomon panted. His sinuses were full of ozone, the discharge of his laser rifle coiling in his nostrils. Rudd slapped him on the shoulder. "Good shot. We need a defensive perimeter, before those fuckers surround us. You got the arc thrower charged?"

Solomon nodded, his mouth dry. He'd drawn the unlucky straw in the Skyranger, being handed the taser in lieu of something useful, like a grenade.

"Good. Doctor Vahlen wants one alive. Again." Rudd's lips drew back over his lips in a rictus grin. "God damn it. Okay. Bedford, cover! Lewis, Richardson, on me!"

There was no way to say no, and Solomon found his legs moving automatically, propelled by the chain of command, as they slipped across from the wall of sandbags to the steel shipping containers facing the line of tanks. Solomon could hear the floaters but couldn't see them. Their metallic roars echoed in the night air.

"Stay low," Rudd whispered. "Lewis, up front. They-"

The three floaters rose above the tanks, blue flames jutting from their undercarriages as they shot into the air, propelled by plasma. The bright lance of Bedford's sniper rifle cut across the sky, missing the pack by inches. Solomon fired instinctively, Richardson's LMG chattering beside him, their combined gunfire deafening.

Two of the floaters spun, collided, and fell to earth, spitting blood and electricity. The third ducked low, slipping behind the line of tanks. "Go, go!" Rudd called. "Chase that fucker down!"

Solomon ran, flanking the parked tanks, his rifle up hard against his shoulder. Rudd was by his side, pistol in hand, and as they rounded the final tank they found the last floater hovering a foot above the ground, hiding behind a stack of wooden shipping crates.

When it came to swinging a pistol, Rudd was fast and true. He aimed and plugged the floater through the chest three times, sending it crashing to the ground. "Stun the fucker!" he called, and Solomon jammed the arc thrower into the monster's chest.

Electricity leaped from his hand to the beast, and it fell in the dirt, flailing and throwing up dust. Solomon jumped back, keeping his distance as the creature finally settled. It was bleeding bad, yellow blood pumping sluggishly from gaping wounds. "You, uh, you beat it up pretty bad, Sarge."

Rudd grinned. "It'll live long enough for Vahlen to poke at it." He sauntered back towards where Bedford had set up his sniper rifle. "Okay, that's the frontal assault, but there'll be more in the wings. Lewis, I want you up front, full loaded. Richardson, you see that garage? Find a way up on that roof. Bedford, you ranged in? I-"

The Sergeant's shouting had all faded into the distance for Solomon. Something had caught his eye on the far side of the compound, beyond the flames and the upturned jeeps and corpses lying blackened in the mud.

There was a row of shipping containers against the furthest wall, stacked two-high, lined up neatly. Some were seared black by plasma blasts, others half melted by the flames, slumping into the mud like candlewax.

In the darkness, beyond the shipping containers, yellow eyes gleamed.

Every X-ray Solomon had seen, whether in the flesh or on shaky chest-cam footage, had been monstrous. The spindle-bodied sectoids, the thin men with their skin-suits and thin smiles, the mutons roaring in their containment cages deep below XCOM Headquarters... Each new alien was a new, terrible assembly of bone and steel, and Solomon had thought he was numb to the horrors that the invasion could throw at him.

He was wrong.

The thing that stalked out of the black was eight feet tall, multilegged, claws scraping on the concrete. At first he thought it was a spider grown impossibly huge, some mutant tarantula emerging from its web, but then he saw the skinny torso emerging from the centre of all those multi-jointed legs, the grasping arms, the two eyes shining with sickly intelligence.

"Jesus," Solomon whispered, as a second set of eyes appeared behind the first, blinking lazily, reflecting flames. The two spider-creatures advanced, claws ringing like steel on the concrete. "Jesus Christ."

The creatures pounced.

Solomon turned and ran, rifle clutched against his chest, lungs pounding, vision blurred by panic. Lewis and Rudd were waiting behind the crates, and their eyes widened as they saw his terror. "Shoot!" he screamed. The crates were only a few feet away, close enough to touch. The clatter of claws rang in his ears. "Shoot them!"  
Laser light ripped across the tank yard. One of the creatures hissed, a sound like oil and water crackling on a stovetop, but the other was close, so close he could feel its foetid breath on the back of his neck.

He spun, raising his rifle, finger on the trigger. The creature loomed over him, blocking out the stars, carapace gleaming.

The claws lifted and fell, so fast they were a blur, and Solomon fell in two neat pieces.

#

Sniper Specialist Paul Bedford was close enough to Solomon that the squaddie's blood splashed across his boots when the monster cut him down. He staggered back, finger on the trigger of his laser rifle, unable to speak, unable to scream. His entire world was the blackness of its chitinous armour, the claws descending, gore dripping thickly from the blades.

Then a voice brought him back. "Bedford, get the fuck down!"

A small shape arced past his head, bouncing on the wooden crates. A grenade. Instinct took over and Bedford threw himself to the floor, just as the grenade detonated. The explosion was a hammer in the guts, smashing the air from his lungs. His ears were filled with a dog-whistle tone.

"Back, back!" That was Sergeant Rudd, his hand on Bedford's shoulder, dragging him away from the line of jeeps. The vehicles were on fire, he realised, great gouts of flame boiling from below the undercarriage. What the X-rays had been unable to do, the grenade had done for them. They were about to blow.

The two creatures were still advancing, but they limped now, dragging their segmented limbs. Thick yellow blood puddled beneath them with every step, but their claws were still long and vicious.

The first of the monsters crouched, tensed, and leaped.

Sergeant Rudd's hand left Bedford's shoulder long enough for him to aim and fire. The laser sliced the creature from the air, leaving it steaming in the dirt. "Get the fuck up!" he said, and Bedford couldn't help but obey.

The second monster jumped too fast for Bedford to track. It skittered back into the shadows of the shipping crates, leaving a trail of sizzling ichor. The clicking of claws echoed off the steel, and then all was silent.

Bedford gripped his rifle tight, waiting for his heart to slow. "What the fuck was that?"

Rudd wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "You think I know?"

"God, it just-" The jeep nearest Bedford exploded as the fuel line caught. Glass shards sheeted across the muck. "Is Solomon-"

Squaddie Richardson had already crossed to where Solomon fell. His face was ashen white. "He's, uh-"

"I know." Bedford's hands had stopped shaking. He swept his rifle across the shipping crates, watching through the scope for any signs of life. There were none. Solomon's blood was drying on his kneepads, and that fact made him want to scream. He'd been joking with the man less than an hour before as they swept south over Lagos, and now he was in two pieces.

It didn't seem possible. It didn't seem fair. Then again, what did fair have to do with war?

Rudd waved towards the shipping containers. "Bedford, keep an overwatch. Richardson, Devil Dog, on me." The Sergeant advanced, rifle up, and although he looked grim Bedford could see his shoulder shaking. "You see anything move, you blow it away."

"Sir." Bedford racked a new battery into his laser rifle and unfolded his bipod, propping his rifle up on the crates where Solomon had died. Rudd's grenade had done terrible things to the Squaddie's corpse, and the floater he'd stunned with the arc thrower had taken shrapnel as well. Their live specimen was dead. Solomon had exposed himself for nothing.

It made Bedford's trigger finger itchy. "Come on, you fuckers," he whispered, sweeping his rifle back and forth across the crates, watching through the night-vision scope as Rudd and his team-mates advanced. "Come on, stick your dicks out, come on-"

A shadow unfolded behind the steel. The monster was back.

Bedford fired, his laser searing across the parade-ground. His shot was precise, and the creature faltered, one of its many terrible legs tumbling into the dirt. But it was still upright, still moving, and there was something behind it, lurching out of the dark. Something upright, two legged, human, ragged and burned black by the fires, moaning through a mouth full of broken teeth.

"Jesus Christ," Bedford whispered. All his childhood nightmares had come to life.

The aliens were fielding zombies.

#

Squaddie Michael Richardson was five paces behind Rudd when the Sergeant fell back, scrambling for cover behind one of the shipping containers. He caught a glimpse of a shambling figure, a man dragging his way out of the dark, and then Rudd's hand caught his wrist and hauled him to safety. "You see that?" the Sergeant hissed.

Richardson wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "Looked like a civvie to me."

"That's no civilian. That guy was..." Santa shuddered. "Okay. Lewis, you're with me. Let's blow this thing away. Richardson, cover. On two-"

They rounded the shipping container, and Richardson found himself face to face with the walking dead.

He couldn't believe what he was seeing. It was a monster ripped from a cheap horror B-movie, a man staggering from the flames, his eyes rolled back in his skull and his chest soaked with gore. Richardson might still have mistaken him for a civvie, if not for the massive wound in his neck - he could see right through to the bone. Something had nearly sliced the man's head off, and he was still walking, still biting at the air.

A zombie. A real life walking zombie.

Then came the sizzle of gunfire as Bedford, Lewis and the Sergeant opened up simultaneously. Three lines of light arced across the compound, and the zombie thing fell apart, still groaning and twitching, carving snow angels in the dirt. Richardson gaped as the thing whistled out the last of its air and, mercifully, died.

Devil-Dog Lewis kicked the thing in the guts. It twitched, but didn't get back up. "You think that came down from the ship?"

"Check the uniform," Richardson said. The zombie was dressed in Nigerian camo, two gold pips on his shoulder. "They're turning soldiers into... shit, Sarge! That isn't right!"

"Focus, Specialist! Still at least one of them out there, and-" Rudd swung around. "Up high, up high!"

Richardson looked up in time to see the spider-thing silhouetted against the night sky. It was scuttling along the lip of the shipping container, dragging its severed limb along the steel, but despite its injury the creature's claws still looked sharp enough to shear through bone.

Panic rose up like glue in his throat as it leaped, arcing high overhead. Rudd and Lewis fired, but too slow, too late, their lasers slicing harmlessly across the night sky. Richardson watched it soar. He could already see where it was going to land.

His finger was on the trigger. He was ready.

The spider thing hit the dirt less than a yard away, mud splashing across its carapace. Firelight slid across its armoured bulk. It turned to Richardson with its jaw hanging low, revealing rows of needle teeth.

He hosed the bastard, not letting go of the trigger until his LMG was dry.

#

They swept the rest of the base but the only things left alive in the maelstrom were two guard dogs driven mad by the heat. Richardson let them out and led them to a busted water main, where they drank gratefully before loping away into the night.

Santa fetched the body bags from the Skyranger. It took two trips to get Solomon inside.

It was a smooth ride back to HQ, but Richardson's stomach kept turning regardless. This was the second time he'd had to sit next to a body in the Skyranger, and the knowledge that Solomon was so close, still there in the flesh but not breathing, not thinking, reduced to meat and bone, made him sick.

He drank water until the shakes stopped, then closed his eyes and willed the flight to go faster.

He was asleep when they bumped down in XCOM HQ, but the jolt brought him back to attention. The tray eased down, and the first thing Richardson saw beyond the glare of the landing bay lights was Commander Pournelle himself, standing at attention.

"Jesus," Bedford whispered. "The Commander-"

"Keep it in your pants," Sergeant Rudd said. He stood slowly, rifle resting on his shoulder. "Solomon goes first."

Richardson stood stiffly, his LMG by his side, bent beneath the Skyranger's low ceiling, as the medical technicians marched in and collected the body bags. This time, at least, Rudd had gotten the zips done up securely. There was no blood on the floor of the Skyranger for a change.

Once the bags were gone, Pournelle crooked one finger towards Sergeant Rudd. "Debrief. Now."

Lewis stood tall by Rudd's side. "Santa, you need any-"

"You too, Lewis. Bedford, get your ass down to the range. I was watching your chestcam. That shit will not pass, soldier."

Bedford's jaw jutted. "Sir!"

Richardson trembled. He'd gunned floaters out of the sky and watched some nightmare spider-thing cut one of his fellow soldiers in half, but Pournelle's sunken eyes and razor-thin scowl was more terrifying than either. So when Pournelle's eyes fell on him his breath seized in his chest.

"Corporal Richardson," Pournelle said.

"Uh, Squaddie Richardson, Sir-"

"What did I say, Corporal? Did I say Squaddie? Am I going deaf in my old age? Clean your weapon and return to the bunks, Corporal!"

Richardson nodded, snatching his LMG from the rack and snapping off a quick salute. He met Sergeant Santa's eyes as he passed, and a look of sympathy passed between them. Then he sprinted past, into the corridors, far beyond Pournelle's judging gaze.

Half an hour later he stepped out of the elevator and into the barracks. He'd heard no announcements while cleaning and storing his LMG, which meant that Solomon's death was still hush-hush. Soon, all the troops would be summoned up to the briefing room. The mission would be summarised in a few sentences. Solomon's death and the blame for it would be passed over in moments. The rest would be a eulogy, just like that read out for Nyssa Zelman and Lucien Hickman. All of Solomon's mistakes wiped clean. Turned into a hero post-mortem.

Which, Richardson thought, he was. But Pournelle's speeches made the XCOM dead into fake heroes. TV heroes. Not real people, scared people, who went down screaming.

He didn't like Pournelle very much.

He passed the pool tables and the drinks machine. The riot of colours behind the glass was just a smear. He punched a dollar into the machine and bought a Twix. It tasted like ash.

He spat the chocolate down the sink and went into the bunkhouse.

Corporal Wendy Gollnick was in her bunk, legs crossed, a book open in her lap. She looked up as Richardson walked in. "Hey! Easy op? No scrapes?"

Richardson nodded numbly. He could just make out the cover of her book – an X-Men hardcover collection. Something twitched in her lap, and long white ears poked out from above the lip of the book. "How's Ripley?"

Gollnick set her comic down, revealing the white rabbit curled up in her lap. "She needs some sun. The UV lamps aren't enough, I think. But they don't mind me stealing salad from the mess, so she's eating all her greens."

Richardson couldn't help but grin. "How'd you get the Commander's approval?"

"I just asked nicely! Pournelle's a nice guy."

"If you get him on a good day."

"I guess." Gollnick flipped a few pages, met Richardson's eyes, and snapped the comic closed. "Where're the others?"

Richardson swallowed. "They're... debriefing."

"Oh God. Who-"

"Solomon."

Gollnick nodded slowly. "Was it... bad?"

"The worst."

Gollnick stroked Ripley almost mechanically. "I'm..."

"Yeah. Sorry."

"They say they're following a signal from the UFOs. Might lead us to their base." Gollnick ducked her head. "It'd be nice to end all of this."

"Yeah. If that is the end."

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Gollnick didn't meet Richardson's eyes. The rabbit in her lap combed its ears.

It didn't seem like there was anything else to say.


End file.
